2.3.11

Inflation & Unemployment Tradeoff

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Inflation and Unemployment Tradeoff

Changing price levels result in movements along, rather than shifts of, the SRAS curve.

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Inflation & unemployment

  • According to the SRAS curve, producers will respond to an increasing price level (inflation) by increasing output - at least in the short run.
  • Assuming that the labor force is held constant, unemployment will fall.
  • Therefore, the SRAS implies a short-run tradeoff between inflation and unemployment: with higher inflation causing lower unemployment and vice versa.
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Limitations to this tradeoff

  • An AS curve's slope changes from nearly flat at its far left to nearly vertical at its far right. At the far left of the aggregate supply curve, the level of output in the economy is far below potential GDP.
  • At these relatively low levels of output, levels of unemployment are high, and many factories are running only part-time, or have closed their doors. In this situation, a relatively small increase in the prices of the outputs that businesses sell—while assuming no rise in input prices—can encourage a considerable surge in the quantity of aggregate supply because so many workers and factories are ready to swing into production.
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Limitations to this tradeoff

  • As the GDP increases, however, some firms and industries will start running into limits: perhaps nearly all of the expert workers in a certain industry will have jobs or factories in certain geographic areas or industries will be running at full speed.
  • In the AS curve's intermediate area, a higher price level for outputs continues to encourage a greater quantity of output—but as the increasingly steep upward slope of the aggregate supply curve shows, the increase in real GDP in response to a given rise in the price level will not be as large.

Jump to other topics

1Microeconomics

2Macroeconomics

2.1The Level of Overall Economic Activity

2.2Aggregate Demand & Aggregate Supply

2.3Macroeconomic Objectives

2.4Economic Growth, Poverty & Inequality

2.5Fiscal Policy

2.6Monetary Policy

2.7Supply-Side Policies

3The Global Economy

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