REPLY TO BRUNNER'S COMMENTS.

The author responds to comments made by Karl Brunner regarding the author's paper in the December 1975 issue of 'The Journal of Law and Economics,' on economic and political factors influencing inflation rates. Brunner's critique is divided into a rejection of the long-run Bailey analysis as irrelevant to the short-run political process, criticism of the cost-push framework for ignoring long-run constraints and skepticism regarding the relevance of the short-term Phillips curve. In his concentration on the postwar persistence of inflation as the sole phenomenon to be explained, Brunner ignores the contribution of the Bailey analysis to the understanding of episodic wartime inflations. Brunner also ignores the contribution of the Phillips Curve slope to an explanation of the persistence of postwar inflation.