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The article presents authors' comments on three research papers on economic development after Second World War by economists Erik Lundberg, George H. Hildebrand and Shigeto Tsuru. These papers point out some striking contrasts among the experiences of countries including Scandinavia, Japan and Italy and the postwar experience of the U.S. For example, these papers insistently raise the question why the U.S. has done so poorly in achieving stable and rapid growth. They discuss whether it is a matter of economic structure, or partly a fault of economic policy. Research paper by Hildebrand provides a summary both of the Italian postwar economic achievement and of Italy's still pressing problems of unemployment and incomplete development. But there are aspects of his analysis that needs to be questioned. Moreover, papers of Hildebrand and Tsuru gave the impression that something of a catching-up process has been important in the Italian and Japanese economies. In his paper Lundberg drew attention to some destabilizing effects of governmental action in Sweden. They refer to public investments or publicly controlled investments as an instrument of anti cyclical policy.

This paper examines three models of three countries showing the common economic theory of the firm underlying the models and modifications of the theory to account of institutional peculiarities. The models chosen for examination are Wharton Mark III, Bank of Canada RDX2, and the Economic Planning Agency. They are chosen from among the various models of the U.S., Canada, and Japan because all three use quarterly data, were made recently, are relatively similar in size and cover various sectors of the economy from demand as well as supply sides. The RDX2 model estimates business investment in machinery and equipment in aggregate terms rather than in industrial sectors. As in the case of investment equations, the adaptive adjustment equation, together with the mark-up on the unit wage rate, serves as the basis for price equations in these three macro models. The weighted average of U.S. prices is used in some price equations of the RDX2 model on the assumption that U.S. subsidiaries in Canada may follow management decisions of the parent companies. As a possible way to overcome the ad hoc introduction of lags, models which incorporate adjustment costs are suggested. However, the adjustment cost approach may not in general give better alternatives, particularly for models involving some degrees of aggregation. The three models surveyed in this paper, especially the Wharton and RDX2 models, employ the Almon lag in estimating the coefficients of the lag polynomial.

This article focuses on factors responsible for a country to capture a significantly larger share of world trade in manufacturing in short time. India and Great Britain are short of arable land, relatively to population. Hence, as their national incomes rise, whether because of population growth or because of growing productivity, both need to import more food and raw materials. In recent history, four countries have captured substantial shares of world trade in manufactures over short periods. The first was Great Britain, starting at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and continuing until about 1860, during which period the volume of her exports of manufactures increased by 5.6 per cent per annum. The second country was Germany, capturing about 6 per cent of world trade between 1890 and 1913. Thirdly, the United States, which even more spectacularly captured 6 per cent between 1890 and 1899-not to mention the even larger gains resulting from two world wars. Finally, there is Japan, whose capture of 3 per cent of world trade in manufactures between 1929 and 1937 attracts special attention mainly because it occurred over a period during which the total volume of world trade contracted.

The trade problem of the Pacific, from the American standpoint, is essentially the problem of whether or not low wage manufactured goods exported from the Orient constitute a menace to U.S. industrial economy. This problem has been brought strikingly to the front by the rapid increase in the production of manufactured goods in Japan since 1930 and the sale of a large part of these goods in the world markets. The increasing sale of Japanese manufactured goods in the U.S. is causing certain American manufacturers to affirm that continued trade with Japan with its cheap labor will force the shifting of manufacturing activity from the U.S. to the far East, or, as the only alternative, the reduction of American wages so that U.S. manufactured goods can be priced in line with those from Japan. The fact that Japan is our third best export customer and is second only to Canada as a source of U.S. imports, makes the problem of changing trade relations with Japan a most important one which deserves careful study.