A high or rising unemployment rate is not a desirable phenomenon. Similarly, high inflation is not covetable. What if both are rising or both remain high? That would be a terrible outcome. American economist Arthur Okun is credited to have proposed a Misery Index in the 1960s.
The Misery Index is the arithmetical sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. It measures the misery that a society suffers as a result of high unemployment and high inflation. During the America's boom period in the 1960s, the Misery Index in the United States was around 7. During the second half ...
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First Published: Mon, February 17 2020. 23:59 IST
