See studies by C. B. Cone (1952) and W. D. Hudson (1970).
See studies by A. E. Castel (1968) and R. E. Shalhoyse (1971).
Setting of government guidelines to limit increases in wages and prices. It is one of the most extreme approaches to incomes policy. By controlling wages and prices, governments hope to control inflation and prevent extremes in the business cycle. Countries with highly centralized methods of setting wages tend to have the greatest degree of public or collective regulation of wage and price levels. For example, wage settlements in The Netherlands must be approved by the government, and price increases are investigated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Other countries, including the U.S., have also made efforts at restraining wage and price increases, usually seeking the voluntary cooperation of management and labour. In the U.S., wage-price controls were instituted by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II and by Pres. Richard M. Nixon in the early 1970s, when high inflation combined with rising unemployment to create instability.
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Measure of living costs based on changes in retail prices. Consumer price indexes are widely used to measure changes in the cost of maintaining a given standard of living. The goods and services commonly purchased by the population covered are priced periodically, and their prices are combined in proportion to their relative importance. This set of prices is compared with the initial set of prices collected in the base year to determine the percentage increase or decrease. The population covered may be restricted to wage and salary earners or to city dwellers, and special indexes may be used for special population groups (e.g., retirees). Such indexes do not take into account shifts over time in what the population buys; when modified to take subjective preferences into account, they are called constant-utility indexes. Consumer price indexes are available for more than 100 countries.
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Measures taken by manufacturers or distributors to control the resale prices of their products (i.e., the prices charged by businesses that resell them). Such measures have been applied to a limited array of goods, including pharmaceuticals, books, photographic supplies, and liquor. Resale price maintenance first began to be employed in the 1880s, reflecting the success of brand promotion and the resulting increase in competition among retailers. It became especially common in the U.S. but declined after World War II. It is prohibited in some countries. The complexity of marketing channels in industrialized countries makes it increasingly difficult for manufacturers to establish and enforce a single price or even a minimum price for their goods. Seealso fair trade law.
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Measure of change in a set of prices, consisting of a series of numbers arranged so that a comparison of the values for any two periods or places will show the change in prices between periods or the difference in prices between places. Price indexes were first developed to measure changes in the cost of living in order to determine the wage increases necessary to maintain a constant standard of living. There are two basic types. Laspeyres-type indexes define a market basket of goods in a base period, then use the prices for those goods to examine change over space and time. In its simplest form, this is simply the ratio of what those goods cost today to what they cost in the base period. The two most familiar indexes of this type are the consumer price index (CPI) and the producer price index (PPI). The CPI measures changes in retail prices in such component parts as food, clothing, and shelter. The PPI (formerly called the wholesale price index) measures changes in the prices charged by manufacturers and wholesalers. Paasche-type indexes define a market basket of goods in the current period, then use the prices of those goods from past periods. The most familiar index of this type is the GDP deflator, used in the U.S. in the national income accounting to differentiate amounts in constant dollars from those in current dollars.
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Practice of selling goods or services at different prices to different buyers, even though sales costs are the same for all the transactions. Buyers may be discriminated against on the basis of income, ethnicity, age, or geographic location. For price discrimination to succeed, other entrepreneurs must be unable to purchase goods at the lower price and resell them at a higher one.
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Collective governmental effort to control the incomes of labour and capital, usually by limiting increases in wages and prices. The term often refers to policies directed at the control of inflation, but it may also indicate efforts to alter the distribution of income among workers, industries, locations, or occupational groups. Seealso wage-price control.
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Amount of money that has to be paid to acquire a given good, service, or resource. Operating as a measure of value, prices perform a significant economic function, distributing the scarce supply of goods, services, and resources to those who most want them through the adjustments of supply and demand. Prices of resources are called wages, interest, and rent. This system, known as the price mechanism, is based on the principle that only by allowing prices to move freely will the supply of any given commodity match demand. If supply is excessive, prices will be low and production will be reduced; this will cause prices to rise until there is a balance of demand and supply. If supply is inadequate, prices will be high, prompting an increase in production that in turn will lead to a reduction in prices until supply and demand are in equilibrium. A totally free price mechanism does not exist in practice; even in free-market economies, monopolies or government regulation may limit the efficiency of price as a determinant of supply and demand. In centrally planned economies, the price mechanism may be supplanted by centralized government control. Attempts to operate an economy without a price mechanism usually result in surpluses of unwanted goods, shortages of desired products, black markets, and stunted economic growth.
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(born Feb. 10, 1927, Laurel, Miss., U.S.) U.S. soprano. She was trained at the Juilliard School. After her debut in a revival of Four Saints in Three Acts in 1952, she made her name in the international tour of Porgy and Bess (1953–55). She sang in Aïda at Milan's La Scala in 1960 and made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1961. Price was one of the Met's most popular stars for more than two decades and was the first African American singer to achieve an international reputation in opera. She gave her farewell performance of Aïda at the Met in 1985 but continued to give recitals.
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The Price River flows by the city, and it is one of several communities near the San Rafael Swell. The city is on U.S. Route 6 and U.S. Route 191, and was one of the communities that was served by the Rio Grande Zephyr.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 4.2 square miles (11.0 km²).4.2 square miles (11.0 km²) of it is land and none of the area is covered with water.
There were 3,045 households out of which 34.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.2% were married couples living together, 11.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 31.5% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 12.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.60 and the average family size was 3.19.
In the city the population was spread out with 27.6% under the age of 18, 15.9% from 18 to 24, 22.5% from 25 to 44, 19.9% from 45 to 64, and 14.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females there were 91.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.3 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $31,687, and the median income for a family was $39,429. Males had a median income of $37,476 versus $21,081 for females. The per capita income for the city was $14,313. About 11.4% of families and 15.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.3% of those under age 18 and 11.1% of those age 65 or over.