The Setting of the Symposium

Abstract

The Symposium on ‘The Labour Market and Inflation’, at which I am greatly honoured to act as chairman, has been called to discuss, essentially, methods of reducing inflationary wage pressure in conditions of full employment and economic growth. In other words, it is connected with what is nowadays called an incomes policy and measures to control or consciously influence the trend of wages. As you know, it has not hitherto proved possible in France to secure general agreement on this subject and I presume that the organisers of this Symposium, in asking me to be chairman, have taken the view that we often derive more knowledge — or at least more experience — from failure than from success.