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This paper addresses two conflicting views in the 1950s and 1960s about the inflation-unemployment tradeoff as given by the Phillips curve. Many economists at this time emphasized the issue of a seemingly unavoidable inflationary pressure at or even below full employment. In contrast, Milton Friedman was convinced that full employment and price stability are not conflicting policy objectives. This dividing line between the two camps ultimately rested on fundamentally different views about the inflationary process: For economists of the 1950s and 1960s cost-push forces are responsible for the apparent conflict between price stability and full employment. On the other hand, Friedman, who regarded inflation to be an exclusively monetary phenomenon, rejected the notion of ongoing inflationary cost-push pressures at full employment. Besides his emphasis on the full adjustment of inflation expectations, this rejection of cost-push theories of inflation, which implied a decoupling of the two previously perceived incompatible policy objectives, was the other important element in Friedman's attack on the Phillips curve tradeoff in his 1967 presidential address to the American Economic Association.

Cet article traite des discussions du début des années 1960 concernant la détermination d’un niveau de demande optimal susceptible de maximiser le taux de croissance. Ce débat eut lieu dans le contexte de la guerre froide où les décideurs, notamment aux États-Unis, étaient tenus de réaliser des taux de croissance supérieurs à ceux de l’Union soviétique. Supposant qu’une maîtrise appropriée de la demande pouvait infléchir le cycle économique, la régulation et la décision du niveau de la pression de la demande étaient considérées comme un instrument majeur de la politique économique. Aussi, le débat a principalement consisté à déterminer si l’économie pouvait ou non fonctionner en présence de fortes pressions inflationnistes et des niveaux de demande élevés, favorables à la croissance, ou si un certain ralentissement de l’économie et des tendances déflationnistes constituaient une condition préalable à une trajectoire de croissance prospère.

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Recent work on labour market effects of globalization has generated both academic and populist interests. However, this work has focussed exclusively on the manufacturing sector. Moreover, general equilibrium effects of globalization have received little attention. This study contributes to filling both these gaps by examining the general equilibrium effects of external exposure on the labor market in Switzerland. We exploit exogenous exchange rate movements to identify trade-induced shocks across all sectors of the Swiss economy and transpose industry-level exposure to the municipal level, using detailed employment data on the entirety of Swiss firms. We find strong evidence for three channels of employment effects of currency appreciation-negative employment growth induced by increasing export uncompetitiveness and higher import competition, and positive employment growth induced by cheaper availability of foreign inputs. The combined average effect of the three channels on employment is found to be negative in our preferred results, with significant heterogeneity across municipalities.