The Rise and Fall of Wage Price Spirals

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In the 1970s, much of the world economy found itself in stagflation where growth was stagnant. There were two big oil price shocks from the OPEC crisis in 1973 and 1978. And then at the same time, you also had a very different pricing structure for wages. So is it time to write wage price spirals out of the economic textbooks if they're just not really a thing?

The killing of a teenager in a Paris suburb has ignited national unrest. We ask what is driving the disquiet, and what it means for a president squeezed on both political sides. In high-inflation times, rising wages worry economists—“wage-price spirals” are a textbook bogeyman. But perhaps the risk is overblown (10:34). And the researchers making burgers from extinct animals (18:22).

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