There once was a town where thanks to expansive fiscal policy in Washington, the town had more money to fix roads and build bridges. The construction workers on those projects splurged on steak dinners every Friday, the meat for which they bought at the local butcher shop. The butcher was thrilled by increased sales of meat, as was the butcher's wholesale supplier. In fact, the butcher's supplier tried to put in bigger orders but it wasn't possible to buy more because the slaughterhouses were caught short, too. The result? Higher prices for meat got passed up from the slaughterhouse to the wholesaler to the butcher to the construction workers. With the possible exception of the owners of cattle, nobody was happy. Now a news reporter heard about surging steak prices in the town and decided to write a story about what was happening. Since the initial increase in meat prices was seen in the price of meat sold by the slaughterhouses, the reporter concluded that the price inflation for meat was a supply shock. Was it? Explain your answer.
The Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman liked to tell this story:
There once was a town where thanks to expansive fiscal policy in Washington, the town had more money to fix roads and build bridges. The construction workers on those projects splurged on steak dinners every Friday, the meat for which they bought at the local butcher shop. The butcher was thrilled by increased sales of meat, as was the butcher's wholesale supplier. In fact, the butcher's supplier tried to put in bigger orders but it wasn't possible to buy more because the slaughterhouses were caught short, too. The result? Higher prices for meat got passed up from the slaughterhouse to the wholesaler to the butcher to the construction workers. With the possible exception of the owners of cattle, nobody was happy. Now a news reporter heard about surging steak prices in the town and decided to write a story about what was happening. Since the initial increase in meat prices was seen in the price of meat sold by the slaughterhouses, the reporter concluded that the price inflation for meat was a supply shock.
Was it? Explain your answer.
(A slaughterhouse is a facility where animals are slaughtered to provide food for humans.)
Step by step
Solved in 2 steps
