Concept

NAIRU

Summary
Non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is a theoretical level of unemployment below which inflation would be expected to rise. It was first introduced as NIRU (non-inflationary rate of unemployment) by Franco Modigliani and Lucas Papademos in 1975, as an improvement over the "natural rate of unemployment" concept, which was proposed earlier by Milton Friedman. In the United States, estimates of NAIRU typically range between 5 and 6%. Monetary policy conducted under the assumption of a NAIRU typically involves allowing just enough unemployment in the economy to prevent inflation rising above a given target figure. Prices are allowed to increase gradually and some unemployment is tolerated. An early form of NAIRU is found in the work of Abba P. Lerner , who referred to it as "low full employment" attained via the expansion of aggregate demand, in contrast with the "high full employment" which adds incomes policies (wage and price controls) to demand stimulation. Friedrich von Hayek argued that governments attempting to achieve full employment would accelerate inflation where unemployment results from a misalignment between the distribution of labour and the distribution of demand. The concept arose in the wake of the popularity of the Phillips curve which summarized the observed negative correlation between the rate of unemployment and the rate of inflation (measured as annual nominal wage growth of employees) for a number of industrialised countries with more or less mixed economies. This correlation (previously seen for the U.S. by Irving Fisher) persuaded some analysts that it was impossible for governments simultaneously to target both arbitrarily low unemployment and price stability, and that, therefore, it was government's role to seek a point on the trade-off between unemployment and inflation which matched a domestic social consensus. During the 1970s in the United States and several other industrialized countries, Phillips curve analysis became less popular, because inflation rose at the same time that unemployment rose (see stagflation).
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