• DOI:10.1086/256374
• Corpus ID: 154605833

A Post-Mortem on Transition Predictions of National Product

@article{Klein1946APO,
  title={A Post-Mortem on Transition Predictions of National Product},
  author={Lawrence Robert Klein},
  journal={Journal of Political Economy},
  year={1946},
  volume={54},
  pages={289 - 308},
  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:154605833}
}

• L. Klein
• Published in Journal of Political Economy 1 August 1946
• Economics

W E ALL recall clearly the headlines in last autumn's press, declaring that "Government economists predict 8 million unemployed by I946. " At the same time, the newspapers were telling us of congressional action to lower corporate and personal income taxes, administrative action to relax ceiling prices on construction materials, lobbyists' pressure to weaken the strength of price controls, and many other inflationary policies. We now find ourselves in the first half of I946 with about three… 

W E ALL recall clearly the headlines in last autumn's press, declaring that "Government economists predict 8 million unemployed by I946. " At the same time, the newspapers were telling us of congressional action to lower corporate and personal income taxes, administrative action to relax ceiling prices on construction materials, lobbyists' pressure to weaken the strength of price controls, and many other inflationary policies. We now find ourselves in the first half of I946 with about three million unemployed and facing one of the greatest inflationary pressures that we have ever experienced. The economists who were warning us of a deflationary danger during the early months of the postwar transition period should have been stressing precisely opposite economic policy. There is no question that they made a mistake, but there are many questions