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Inflation remained
low during 1984
In 1984, a variety of factors reinforced each other to hold inflation substantially in check as was the case in 1983:
Good harvests for many agricultural crops, both in the United States and abroad;
Continued weakness in world commodity markets for energy and many basic industrial materials;
The unusually high value of the U.S. dollar in international currency markets, which encouraged a surge of imports that averted production and labor bottlenecks by siphoning off much of the upswing in domestic demand;
Weak export demand for most U.S. made goods, also caused in large part by the strength of the dollar;
An excellent year for domestic capital investment projects designed to expand capacity with demand;
Solid U.S. productivity improvements and general wage restraint, both of which held down rises in unit labor costs;
American monetary policies which gave high priority to maintaining a low rate of inflation; and
The slowing of the domestic economic expansion in the latter half of the year.
As a result, inflation in 1984 at both the retail and the producer levels rose at a rate of less than 5 percent for the third consecutive year. This moderate performance coincided with the second year of strong economic recovery from a recession that ended in late 1982.
This excerpt is from an article published in the April 1985 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
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