All had one thing in common, they were private concerns and also priced goods at 11 d, 1/11 , 2/11 even 19/11 .

The result was that the public not only spurned regularly priced goods but began to express skepticism about "sales."

In pre-capitalist societies, where many inputs and outputs often weren't priced goods, but allocated "by right" or according to custom, the concept of an average production price would be rather meaningless.

If anything abetted the decline in the 1980's, it was the too-strong dollar, which priced American goods out of markets here and abroad.

Economists said the data could mean that a recent rise in the pound's value was pricing British goods off foreign markets.

The thing I remember most, though, was the way we priced goods.

It explains how to price goods or services, how to combat the risk of exchange rate changes and the practicalities of dealing in foreign currencies.

The weakness of the ruble, which was devalued in August 1998, has bolstered the industry by pricing foreign goods out of the local market and making Russian wood more competitive abroad.

Japanese manufacturers, for example, might step up plans to build factories abroad, in the belief that a higher yen will price Japanese goods out of the market.

That would price foreign goods out of the American market, sending Japan and West Germany into recession and jolting the American economy with an unwelcome burst of inflation.