Pricing Systems, Indexes, and Price Behavior

Nancy and Richard Ruggles's seminal work on prices has a contemporary relevance for modern-day theorists and practitioners. These carefully selected essays provide a core analysis of pricing systems and the behavior and measurement of prices. Initially, the authors examine pricing systems and the role of prices in the theories of value and income distribution. They examine the theory of marginal cost pricing and the welfare basis of the marginal cost pricing principle before focusing on the problems of measuring price changes over time and space. They also examine the reliability of domestic price statistics and price indices and offer an evaluation of the wholesale price index. They expand this analysis to examine the behavior of prices, costs, wage rates and earnings in the United States economy, placing particular emphasis on inflation between 1950 and 1973 and on price stability and economic growth. This book will be invaluable to academics, statisticians and policymakers with an interest in micreoconomics and pricing.