Editor’s Note: Special thanks to AEI Senior Fellow in Economic Policies Studies and editor of AEI Economic Perspectives, Stan Veuger, for his thoughtful contributions and insight for this edition of From the AEI Archive.

AEI started publishing an annual edited volume titled “Contemporary Economic Problems” in 1976. As the title indicates, the project was motivated by the severe economic problems the country faced at the time. Persistent high inflation had not served to “buy” low unemployment rates, as William Fellner explains in the preface to the 1976 volume: in fact, elevated inflation and high unemployment were going hand in hand. The volumes ponder this dire situation and present options for reform, drawing on both macroeconomic and microeconomic analysis. Many of the broad areas of concern continue to be of significant interest to policymakers today, even if the specifics have changed.

To take one example, the 1978 volume opens with two essays on inflation, but also includes three chapters on the international economy, two on the labor market, and one each on health care policy, immigration policy, and agriculture policy, among others. While the health care policy landscape looks quite different today—Medicare had only been around for a little over a decade—Bob Helms’ chapter highlights problems that persist today, including the steep barriers to entry into the medical profession. The chapter on immigration, by Barry Chiswick, includes empirical findings that remain true today—on the economic success of the children of immigrants, for example—as well as a prescient warning about the inevitable racial profiling and red tape that would accompany stepped-up interior enforcement.

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