Income policies: the experience of some industrialized countries

Abstract

The income policy has got, after some years, a larger meaning than that of a mere correcting intervention of the effects on income as a result from the free acting of the market mechanisms. Since the authors think that the most significant experiences in this field are those of some industrialized countries, this text presents a brief description of the income policies put into practice in Holland, Great-Britain and France, immediately, after the second World War till 1979. The authors succedingly describe the social and economic context in which those experiences had place, the institutional changes they made, the technical instruments to which they resorted, the respective articulation in the larger context of economic policy, as well as the debate on it. The analysis of the difficulties that such experiences met makes possible, at the end of the article, to raise the question of knowing the viability of the income policy within a near future.