Search

The author comments on the article "Credit Regulations and Consumer Buying," by Duncan McC. Holthausen. The author explains that he agrees with Holthausen on the importance of having adequate consumer credit statistics. In Holthausen's article he presents suggestions for improving the figures, which fall into four broad categories. The categories include the elimination of non-consumer credit items in the statistics, adding consumer credit items not covered, bringing benchmark figures up to date, and expand and improve the reporting samples used to project benchmark figures. The author critically analyzes these categories.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development, implementation, and availability of a computer program for generating a variety of feasible network problems together with a set of benchmarked problems derived from it. The code "NETGEN" can generate capacitated and uncapacitated transportation and minimum cost flow network problems, and assignment problems. In addition to generating structurally different classes of network problems the code permits the user to vary structural characteristics within a class. Problems benchmarked on several codes currently available are provided in this paper since NETGEN will also allow other researchers to generate identical problems. In particular, the latter part of the paper contains the solution time and objective function value of 40 assignment, transportation, and network problems varying in size from 200 nodes to 8,000 nodes and from 1,300 arcs to 35,000 arcs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any pattern of actual growth is bound to look like a multiplier accelerator model over the long run and we must not deduce too much motivational significance from the appearance. But it does help acquaint us with the mechanics of the present model to see its close quantitative analogy with the familiar machine. If we know on the basis of knowledge other than long-run time series, that investment decisions were mainly related to current or short-term factors, then a long-run model might reflect some kind of average behavior; but it would probably be fairly unreliable for analysis or prediction, it could differ greatly from the true structure of the system and it would probably yield no information about the motivation of investment at the level of the individual firm. It is a self-propelled machine that ignores the intra-decade bends in the road and navigates from a minimum of secular benchmarks. There exists an optimum rate of growth of the labor force which will just assure sufficient investment for the maintenance of full employment; and a deviation, up or down, from this rate will result in a cumulative process of inflation or deflation respectively.

The article presents comments of the author on the article "The Revised Index of Industrial Production," by Clayton Gehamn. A major revision of the Federal Resent Board index of industrial productivity was put into effect in 1959. Important changes were addition of electric and gas utilities and fluid-milk processing to the index, adjustment to 1957 values added weights for the index, covering the period since January 1953 and shift to a 1957 index base, while continuing the old 1947-49 base for summary groups and adjustment of indexes to benchmarks indicated by the 1954 Census of Manufacturers, adoption of new annual indexes for 32 series and annual correction factors for 3 series. Other changes of general interest include a new presentation by market groupings and improved seasonal adjustment factors. All of these revisions are good in principle and some, notably the market grouping presentation, may prove of considerable analytic value. However, there are questions concerning the way in which these changes were carried out and as to the over-all accuracy of the revised index. The new index, since the start of 1951, has increased more rapidly than the old. By mid-1959, when the substitution was made, the new Index was 8 per cent higher than the old, representing an average spread of about 1 per cent per year.