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This article presents the author's view on George Stigler's paper debunking the effects of economic conditions on electoral results in the United States. I view Stigler's paper as a healthy antidote to conventional wisdom and a refreshing contrast to the frequent practice of computer-users of running regressions until they find something significant. Nonetheless, I believe there is more to the relation between voting behavior and general economic conditions than meets the jaundiced eye, and I am particularly concerned that Stigler's criticisms should be correctly interpreted as dropping the gauntlet--and not a wet blanket--on research in this area. I do not share his negative presumptions about the satisficing model in general or its applicability to voting behavior in particular. To use his example of a 3 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, it tells us far more than the extra number of people unemployed at a moment of time. It also means that an extra 12 percent of all adult male workers will have experienced some costly spell of unemployment within the preceding year. Without a reliable theoretical guide, the specification of favorable economic conditions becomes a matter of hunch and taste. In the final section of his paper, Stigler sets forth as an alternative a long-memory model of how macroeconomic performance might influence voters. Unlike the Kramer satisficing voter who sees the two parties only as ins and outs, the Stigler long-memory voter has a definite perception of Republicans and Democrats.

The article discusses researches conducted by economists Paul A. David, Warren J. Scoville and Earl J. Hamilton. Researcher Stanley Engerman in his discussion on David's article suggests that his article represents the most thorough study in the debate concerning American economic growth between 1800 and 1840. It is based both on new time series not previously utilized and upon the resourceful application of available data to clarify certain key points. Another researcher Ross M. Robertson while discussing Scoville's article finds his article on the whole persuasive. Robertson certainly has no quarrel with his quantitative inferences, nor for that matter with his description of French governmental regulation in the eighteenth century. He was not altogether convinced of the direct correlation between the paper industry's expansion and the relaxation of direct governmental controls that Scoville alleges. Perhaps Scoville's more extended publications on this subject will elucidate this relationship.

This article focuses on papers discussed at the round table meeting on "the teaching of elementary economics" on December 30, 1949, at New York. Since the movement toward a general course in the social sciences seems to one essential it would be useful at this stage to collate the experiences of the hundred institutions now engaged in offering such a course. Fortunately both the American Economic Association and the American Political Science Association are engaged in a survey of this field by questionnaire and interviews. It is already clear, however, that the general course can be expected to follow no set formula. Its content and emphasis will vary from college to college with the abilities, interests, and philosophies of the staff members, and with the financial resources of the institution. One do not consider such diversity unfortunate. It is fragmentation and compartmentalization which are making the teaching of the social sciences increasingly ineffective in the light of social integration today. The closest integration will continue to recognize the infinite diversity contained in the fundamental unity of society.

In 1963 economists Milton Friedman and David Meiselman published a paper for the Commission on "Money and Credit," in which they attempt to test the relative predictive power of Keynesian and monetary theories of business fluctuations. Their methods and conclusions were sharply disputed in papers by scholars Donald Hester, Albert Ando and Franco Modigliani, and Michael DePrano and Thomas Mayer. The purpose is to review this controversy. The method is the simple one of first replicating the studies over the original sample periods and then examining the postsample performance of the competing equations. On a sociological level there can be little doubt that this controversy was and continues to be, enormously valuable. Many economists have been stimulated to work on the questions disputed by the monetarist and Keynesian combatants and it is probably correct to argue that two models of the U.S. economy are a direct outgrowth of the controversy. What has been missing from this continuing controversy, however, is an ex post evaluation of the earlier empirical work.

The article suggests that there are three alternatives to overcome the U.S. balance payment of deficit. The author of this article argues that increasing crises occur in the system because of the udervaluation of gold, that the elasticity of the gold exchange standard based on the U.S. balance of payments has enabled the system to operate successfully in the past decade, and that the use of paper gold is the only device on which a lasting world monetary system can be based. The so called U.S. "balance-of-payments deficit" is the result of sign the growth in world demand for reserve media which, since 1958, could only be supplied by the U.S. and is not the consequence of a faulty adjustment mechanism. Elimination of the system of crises could be accomplished either by an increase in the real price of gold or by the introduction of paper gold, but the simultaneous elimination of the sequences of crises and the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit can only be resolved by the introduction of paper gold. Therefore a solution through paper gold is better than return to real gold.

This article examines the practice of the federal reserve banks in requiring eligible or near-eligible paper as so-called "marginal" or "additional collateral," to paper discounted by them, in contradistinction to advances on member bank' notes payable collateraled by United States securities or eligible paper. As a setting for collateraled discounts, the history and purposes of collateraled advances are stated, as well as the reasons for the ascendancy of such advances over discount. In their publications the federal reserve authorities fail to acknowledge any difference between (1) rediscounting and (2) allowing advances against eligible paper pledged; nor do they report separately the absolute or relative amount of discounts to which "additional collateral" is required, nor the "margin" required, nor the number of members putting up such margins, nor any other data relative thereto. There are no provisions in the Federal Reserve act or regulations for the practice; and yet it is no mean method of credit control. The reasons offered by the reserve banks for the practice are: (1) to repress excessive borrowing by the applicant member, in the Interest of the reserve bank, of the applicant member, or of the system as a whole, using this device as a supplement to credit rationing, discount rate variation, and moral suasion; (2) to increase the protection to the reserve banks themselves for credits granted; (8) to compensate for the less rigid insistence by the reserve banks on technical qualifications in credit granting and thus to make possible greater extensions of credit to members than can be had on the strict merit of the paper offered for discount; and (4) to acquiesce in greater degree to the traditional methods of Inter-bank finance and to break down the isolation of the reserve banks from the business and financial world. Each of these reasons is examined and criticized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the underlying theory and the conclusions on economic policy derived from the proposals by Professor Ragnar Frisch for a thorough study of balance of payments broken down by countries and currencies. Several countries, short of foreign exchange, balance their imports by state control at the amount available from exports and other sources; any increase in exports enables them to import more, any decrease in exports forces them to import less. In the U.S., on the other hand, the volume of imports is determined by private importers independently of the reserve position of the country; the total volume of imports is below the level determined by national income and relative prices, and no change of exports would influence the actual volume of imports. In these conditions, discrimination against imports from the U.S. will increase world trade.

The article examines price fixing in the print paper manufacturing industry in the U.S. In 1916, the Federal Trade Commission conducted an investigation of the news print paper manufacturing industry. As one result of that investigation, the commission was convinced of the desirability of establishing reasonable and stable prices for news print paper, and endeavored to arrange for such prices by agreement with the manufacturers. While negotiations looking toward voluntary cooperation were under way, however, the Federal Grand Jury for the Second District of New York brought indictments against several leading manufacturers, whereupon negotiations with the commission were broken off. It is submitted that in a business in which there are numerous competitors, each subject to the ups and downs of competition, the principles applied in the valuation of public utilities cannot be used. A public utility, by its very nature, is a monopoly and furnishes a product which has a special and vital essentiality to the people of the community served. These characteristics do not apply to the manufacture of news print paper.

This section presents the report of the American Economic Review's managing editor on the number of manuscripts submitted to the journal in 1972. In 1970, the journal reached a high mark of 879 manuscripts submitted. The number has now declined for two successive years. The backlog of accepted papers has not changed. As of December 31, 1972. there are seventy-four accepted papers which have not yet been published. Twenty-two will appear in the March 1973 issue and twenty-seven in June. The remaining twenty-five will appear September or December 1973. Because of the smaller size of manuscripts, the journal was able to print 143 this year, compared with 115 last year. Thus the ratio of printed to submitted manuscripts rose to 20 percent. Just as the ratio does not indicate the probability of accepting a manuscript, an increase in the ratio does not mean we are printing poorer quality manuscripts. The quality has gone up. The average size of articles in 1972 is 12.5 pages and the average size of communications is 4.1 pages, a reduction from last year. The total size of the journal (1,081 net pages) is slightly longer than planned last year, and it will be held at this size. The journal printed the same number of copies in 1972 as 1971.

The article presents discussions by economists on some papers that are published in the May 1, 1970 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that his comments are directed mainly to the paper by economist R. Radner and L.S. Miller. The author is particularly interested in the data Radner and Miller have assembled on variations in faculty-student ratios among groups of institutions and over time. However, before commenting on that aspect of their paper, the author wants to know how student aid is treated in their analysis. The author cannot tell from the paper itself how this variable has been handled and yet it is clearly of great importance in many cases. To return to the faculty-student ratios, the intriguing question is, of course, related to observed patterns. The difficulty that Radner and Miller have had to-date in finding systematic relationships between faculty-student ratios and other variables, or even in presenting much in the way of conjectures, attests to the complexity of the problem. It also serves as a challenge to economists to come up with some ideas of their own. In this spirit, the author suggests that variations in faculty-student ratios can be understood only in the context of more complete behavioral models for various groups of institutions.

The article presents discussions by economists on papers by economists James N. Morgan and James D. Smith that was published in the May 1, 1970 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that the two papers presented by Morgan and Smith reflect changing times. According to the author, income distribution and especially the distribution at the low end are back in the spotlight as an issue of social policy and appropriately it is eliciting scientific attention. Early in the 1960's, concern with sharing the national economic pie was eclipsed by the urgent concern about the lagging growth of the pie. Economists were wise to focus on the aggregative issues in the early 1960's and it is wise to shift focus onto distributive issues as one enters the 1970's. Now that the U.S. has reaped important benefits of economic growth and high employment, other problems deserve emphasis. Both of the present papers make a contribution to that knowledge. They reflect different methodological approaches and stress different issues. They do share one substantive characteristic, pointing to the importance of labor force participation by the wife as a key determinant of family income and income changes.

The article presents a summary of the papers presented at a round table conference on problems of the U.S. commercial policy. The Chairman remarked that two types of conflict had emerged in American commercial policy: the conflict between their foreign trade policy and certain of the objectives in New Deal domestic policy, and the conflict of their foreign policy with the foreign policies of the so-called "totalitarian" states. Professor Frank A. Southard, Jr.'s paper states that the trade policy of Germany has not been more successful than that of the United States. It has not succeeded in driving American exports out of foreign markets, nor has it prevented the United States from finding countries willing to support a non-discriminatory trade policy. Trade agreements have already been made with twenty countries, accounting for about 60 per cent of their foreign trade. E.D. Durand's paper dealt with "The European War and the Import Trade of the United States." The first World War resulted in a quantitative decrease in American imports, and sharp changes in the commodity composition of the trade. There was a marked decline (in terms of value) in the percentage of total imports furnished by Europe and a corresponding decline in the imports of the finished manufactured goods which are the typical products of that region. The shift from indirect to direct trade in such commodities as wool, tin and rubber was also responsible for the decline in imports from Europe.

The article discusses the work of the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1953. Seven reports were published by the National Bureau in 1953. The preparation of a number of others was effectively advanced during the period, and work on several new projects was started. New research in the field of international economic relations developed further in 1953. A project was begun that would develop index numbers of prices and quantities for the exports and imports of the United States, by commodity groups, beginning in 1869. Another project that involved construction of estimates of the Canadian balance of payments back to 1868 was completed. Plans were completed for a project on the structure of world trade and payments, and operations were begun with the aid of a special grant of funds. Plans for a study to determine the trends in the output of the Russian economy were drawn up and a special grant of funds was obtained to conduct it. A study of wages and productivity in the United States was planned in 1953 which would deal with money and real wages from 1860 to 1952 and with productivity from 1899 to 1952.

The article presents discussions by economists on some papers that are published in the May 1, 1970 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that a monetary indicator is a variable the value of which tells whether monetary policy is becoming more or less restrictive, given influences of current and past fiscal policy, past monetary policy and stochastic elements affecting investment, saving and portfolio balance. Presumably, advocates of the interest rate as an indicator interpret a fall in the rate as a symptom of a less restrictive monetary policy, while advocates of the money supply interpret a larger money supply or larger rate of change of the money supply as indicative of a more expansive monetary policy. However, it appears that the problem of choosing an indicator has no content over and above the problem of choosing the optimal monetary instrument. Economist Richard Zecher's paper, published in the present issue of the journal, illustrates the fact that the information needed to assess the appropriateness of alternative monetary indicators is exactly the information required to choose between alternative monetary instruments. A glance at the major points of controversy in the discussion of monetary indicators makes it clear that there is really no separate indicator problem.

The article presents discussions by economists on some papers that are published in the May 1, 1970 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that one of the greatest obstacles to the efficient pricing of communication services seems to be a wide gap between costs of service of established common carriers and costs of facilities embodying the most modern technologies, which are microwave radio, satellite and the newest coaxial cable. Economist Harvey J. Levin's paper, published in the present issue of the journal, reminds its readers that this generalization applies clearly only to the comparison of private costs, until opportunity cost of the spectrum, that the first two of these new media use, is taken into account. Without them one cannot be sure how great is their margin of superiority in terms of social costs. But even with this correction, the rate of technological progress in long-distance communication has been so rapid that it has apparently outrun the rate of depreciation permitted by regulatory commissions on existing facilities.

The papers by economists James M. Buchanan and Julius Margolis deal primarily with voting, while economist Roland N. McKean's paper is concerned mainly with politicians and bureaucrats. The subjects of these papers therefore fall squarely within the domain of political science. Another characteristic that these papers have in common is a concern with the way political processes determine the amount of resources allocated to the production of public goods. Buchanan and McKean suggest that the U.S. political and fiscal system systematically tends to allocate excessive resources to the satisfaction of social wants, while Margolis suggests that local referendums, at least, can lead to less than optimal levels of public investment. the possible tendency toward excessive purchases of public goods in Buchanan's final model may well be counteracted by opposing factors. First, demonstration effects are surely strongest in the private sector, and they tend to lead toward an excessive purchase of private goods. Second, billions of dollars are spent advertising private goods, while public goods are normally not similarly advertised.

This article presents a comment on economist M.A. Adelman's paper. Adelman's paper makes three major points— first, that competition is feasible in the oil industry, second, that domestic regulatory policies of the U.S. have produced monstrous wastes, third, that the wastes caused by such monopoly as persists in foreign oil markets are far less important than those attributable to domestic cartelization. He also makes certain predictions about the future course of world oil prices and prospective competitiveness of atomic power. His argument here is based essentially on the industry's inherent tendency to statically diminishing returns. On Adelman's third major point, the contrast he draws between the circumstances at home and abroad is instructive. But in pressing the contrast, it seems that he has at some points minimized unduly the persistence of monopoly in foreign production. The evidence of how much remains is the fact, emphasized several times by him, that the price, though much reduced, is still far above finding-developing-operating costs.

The article presents authors' comments on two research papers related to wheat trade in the U.S. by economists John A. Schnittker and Helen C. Farnsworth. These authors say that two papers reveal somewhat divergent papers on U.S. wheat policy. They have done much to clarify a tangled situation and to document grave weaknesses in our current program. A clue to one of the causes of the apparent breakdown of the wheat policy is found in Farnsworth's paper, which sketches in some detail the international ramifications and effects of American wheat policy. As wheat policy demonstrates, the U.S. is simply too powerful a force in world markets, in the world economy. Indeed, merely minimizing damaging effects of a policy upon other nations is not enough. Wheat is a world problem and requires a world solution. Moreover Schnittker's paper for a wheat program is over particularized and the choice he noses between different specified methods of meeting these imperatives is a false choice. If farm policy-makers were to separate their thinking of the problem of rural poverty from the problem of efficient commercial agriculture and were to treat welfare problems of rural people as welfare rather than market problems, the way should be open to solution for more trying difficulties in the farm economy.

The article presents authors' comments on two research papers on cost accounting by economists James C. Bonbright, John R. Meyer and Gerald Kraft. Bonbright's paper said that costs be allocated in such a way that rates based on the costs allocated to a product should induce an efficient supply of the product and an efficient distribution of that supply. He grappled with some accounting and regulatory practices that cause a consistent bias away from such an efficiency-inducing allocation of costs and resources and recommended that attempts to allocate total costs be abandoned. Instead, he would determine the long-run marginal cost for each product to the extent that rates based on these marginal costs do not provide revenues equal to total costs, he would adjust rates, the method of adjustment varying with individual cases. As he points out, there is no single formula for the allocation of these non-marginal costs that will always satisfy the requirements of efficiency. The paper of Meyer and Kraft nicely complements the conceptual approach of Bonbright with a statistical study that is essentially an attempt to identify the marginal costs in transportation, on the basis of which the regulators can use their powers of traffic allocation, direct and indirect, to encourage the efficient use of transportation resources.

This article focuses on the book "Studies in the Structure of the American Economy--Theoretical and Empirical Explorations in Input-Output Analysis," by Wassily Leontief and others. The volume is a product of the first three years of the Harvard Economic Research Project set up with the help of a Rockefeller Foundation grant. It consists of 5 parts. The first four of the volume's twelve chapters are by Leontief. The first three--"Introduction," "Structural Change," and "Dynamic Analysis" comprise Part I, entitled "Static and Dynamic Theory." The fourth--"Interregional Theory," together with Walter Isard's paper "Some Empirical Results and Problems of Regional Input-Output Analysis" constitute Part II. Part III consists of two papers--"The Structure of Capital" by Robert N. Grosse and "The Telephone Industry: A Study in Private Investment" by Paul G. Clark. Part IV, entitled "Explorations in the Use of ethnological Data," contains "Process and Production Functions from Engineering Data" by Louis B. Chenery, "Problems of Classification and Aggregation" by Mathilda Holzman, "The Technological Structure of the Cotton Textile Industry" by Anne P. Grosse, and "Commercial Air Transportation in the United States" by Allen R. Ferguson. Part V entitled "Consumption and Final Demand" consists of "The Role of Demand in the Economic Structure" by James S. Duesenberry and Helen Kistin.

The article presents a critical discussion of the papers by Summer H. Slichter and C.L. Christenson on the effects of collective bargaining by labor unions on labor markets and economic conditions. According to the author Sllchter criticizes those who believe, that the influence of unions on earnings has been slight. Many of Slichter's cormment falls into two parts, first, that unions have relatively little effect in the long run and, second, that during rapid inflations unions do not accelerate the rise in wage and may even retard it. Slichter argues, first, that raising wages is a major purpose of unions. Since unions have the power to achieve their other major purposes, it is only reasonable to conclude that they have the power to achieve this one. In general, Slither has doubts about the value of comparisons between union and nonunion wages. A demonstration that unions are able to raise wages is necessary but not sufficient to show that unions can cause inflation. The author however agrees with the view presented by Christenson in his paper.

The article presents critical discussion of two papers by George Garvy and Edward F. Denison on the distribution of national income. According to the author Garvy has expressed some doubt as to the existence of a long-term trend of diminishing income inequality. Both manners have also stressed the very crucial choice of income definitions and the basic family unit used in measuring inequality statistically. Garvy has also suggested an interesting change in the income unit used to measure inequality. The usual per capita income measure may be useful from a welfare standpoint or in relation to consumer demand. Commenting on the paper by Denison, the author says that he has identified the ordinary business sector and then, within that division, distinguished several farm and non-farm ownership forms and property income sources. At the end of his paper, Denison introduced the government as tax collector and payer of transfer incomes. The author applaud his remarks on the effect of taxes and transfers and regret that the scope of his paper could not have been somehow extended to include more discussion of income redistribution.

The article presents critical discussion by various economists on the papers by Arnold C. Harberger and G. Warren Nutter about monopoly and the U.S. economy. According to the author the paper by Harberger id addressed to competition in factor markets in the long run. Harberger considers the factor, capital, and defines the long run for statistical purpose. The calculations on which the figures presented in the paper are based and the argument supporting them are stimulating and ingenious. The most serious quarrel with the paper involves what is not in it rather than what is. Nutter, on the other hand, goes on to describe other areas where competition, though irregular and delayed, nevertheless does operate in a direct fashion, and a still larger area where the constant pressure of potential competition works toward competitive ends albeit with delays and discontinuities. To the author the degree of competitiveness has been referred to the length of the adjustment period necessary for demand to become elastic in the neighborhood of where marginal costs and price approach one another.

The article presents comments of different persons on price control and rationing papers written by various economists. According to Paul M. O'Leary, until now price controls, production, and materials controls, wage controls, and rationing have been, in the main, consistent one with another. The War Production Board's control of the demand for industrial materials and the U.S. Office of Price Administration's rationing control of the demand for certain consumer's goods have contributed tremendously to the relative success of price control. According to Elmer B. Staats, he believes that there is agreement that their anti-inflationary controls are highly interdependent and that price and rationing during the period cannot succeed unless the controls are adequately co-ordinated. Secondly, each of the papers emphasizes the practical difficulties which will face the government agencies during the transition period in maintaining necessary controls in the face of the desire to relax government restrictions, inability to retain personnel, and what may appear to be a conflict with a program for full employment by industry.

The article presents information on essay contributions to Pabst Post-war Employment contest, which offered $50,000 in prizes for the best and the most practical solutions to the broad problems of post-war employment in the U.S. Serious contributions by professional students of the subject were solicited. Seventeen winning essays have been published by the Pabst Co. The collection is well worth for the insight provides into the applied economic thinking of a group of able and at least potentially influential economists. There is a striking agreement in fundamental outlook characterizing a large majority of papers. This agreement takes the form of an implicit or explicit interpretation of the problem as primarily the problem of finding adequate offsets to savings at the level of employment desired. The majority of these papers begin with a fundamentally correct understanding of what the employment problem is, and advocate measure that would at least work in the right direction. A large majority of the proposals are extremely sensible, and there are few measures advocated in any of the papers that would not confer real benefits on the U.S. economy.

The article presents a diversity of recommendations of monetary policy. Several policies ended by one speaker are rejected by another. Most of the policies followed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration are rejected. There is little sympathy with the stagnation doctrine, with government spending on a long-time basis, with promoting recovery by easy money or with giving monetary policy a dominant role in control of national economic activity. With the total volume of eligible paper in the portfolios of the Federal reserve banks amounting to only 3 million dollars, out of total assets of 19 billion for the Federal reserve banks and of 74 billion for the banks of the country and with excess cash and bank balances of 16 billion dollars and no likelihood of members borrowing from the reserve banks in the near future, it is difficult to see how any control can be exercised by qualitative considerations. To enforce the rule that banks match their total demand deposits by cash and self-liquidating paper and dispose of the non-self-liquidating loans and investments in excess of their savings deposits would be ruinous to the banks. Finally, it is becoming increasingly clear that unless taxation and labor policies, in particular, are harmonized with public investment policy, the latter can do but little to promote a higher level of private investment.

The article examines the international gold standard. The international gold standard fell in an epidemic of Midas' disease but it was attacked through its own Achilles' heel. Important paper currencies were stronger than the gold currencies so long as they were kept flexible in gold value. The international gold standard has now, for some years, been moribund, if not dead. For many decades the allegedly outstanding advantage of the gold standard was its international character. The maintenance of a gold standard which is no longer used in the bulk of international transactions therefore involves gold-standard countries, in equal degree with silver or paper using nations, in the uncertainties of exchange, and, in possibly greater degree, in the uncertainties of price levels. With the value of gold steadily rising in terms of commodities, from 1929 to 1933, every shrewd trader avoided converting gold into goods or into gold currencies and sought the opposite course of converting goods and currencies into gold.

The article presents information on the 49th annual meeting of the American Economic Association, lists people that have been added to the American Economic Association since August 1, 1936, and reports about appointments and resignations in different U.S. universities. The American Economic Association's meeting that will take place from December 28-30, 1936, in Chicago, Illinois, will see economists presenting papers on varied economic topics. Some people who became members of the association include: W.C. Bagley, H.B. Baker, W.D. Barlow and E.C. Burris. Laurence J. Ackerman has joined as an instructor in insurance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. James P. Adams has been made the acting president of Brown University.

This article discusses various research papers related to price regulation published in the March 2, 1936 issue of the journal "The American Economic Review." As we begin to get at the essence of any problem, we are likely to find that it loses the appearance of simplicity that it may have first possessed. We find complexities, involutions, differences that we never suspected, and that baffle us while they stimulate and fascinate us. This is the beginning of wisdom in economic research. Researcher Spurgeon Bell's paper brings home to us the institutional character of price rigidities. In mechanization, heavy overhead, and all that they entail are found some of the most compelling causes of price rigidity. The economic characteristics of an industrial economy, rather than original sin, seem to be primary factors of this problem. This is not to say that there is not some trace of original sin in the situation. Perhaps if we could take a representative set of corporation accounts and boil them down to their essence, the final precipitate might contain some trace of this sin.

The article presents information about various documents and reports related to demography. Bulletin 127 of the Bureau of the Census deals with Chinese and Japanese of the United States. A large part of this material has been previously published in the population volumes of the Thirteenth Census and in the bulletins for the several states. The principal new part, however, deals with agricultural statistics. The Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics of Australia has published Australian Life Table, 1901-1910. Tables are based upon the mortality experience of the commonwealth for ten years. Those relating to male lives are printed on white paper and those relating to, female lives on tinted Paper. The tables of elementary values, which form the mortality basis of the succeeding monetary tables, are a portion of the results of an extensive investigation of mortality experience of the commonwealth and its component states for the three periods, 1881-1890, 1891-1900, and 1901-1910. The monetary tables comprise, for each sex, for the rates of interest 3 per cent, 3.5 per cent, 4 per cent, 4.5 per cent, and 5 per cent, the usual commutation columns and the annual and continuous values for life annuities, single premiums, and annual premiums.

The article presents a discussion on some of the papers in the March 1915 issue of "The American Economic Review." These papers so thoroughly illustrate a point made by both speakers that it might be suspected that the authors had counseled with each other, were there not more fundamental reasons for their agreement. They are agreed that much serious effort must be put on the study of the marketing question in order to reduce the cost of living. That the marketing of agricultural products has met with the same difficulties non-agricultural products have encountered is apparent. Royal Meeker's paper attempts to correct any abuses, particularly those of transportation, that have not been made fast enough to suit him and that their ultimate solution cannot be hoped for along the lines followed. He therefore suggests the radical postage-stamp rate of transportation as the solution. In suggesting this service he does not seem to realize that he is tampering with natural conditions on the one hand, and that on the other hand he proposes to compel the farmers adjacent to the large centers of consumption to produce all that these centers need, particularly of perishable products.

This article proposes a forecasting model for estimating the effects of cost increases in polluting industries on the economy of the U.S. The economic effects of pollution cost control is quite small except for the changes in the net foreign balance. The net foreign balance would continue to decline substantially unless pollution were taxed at the border. The relative differences between the direct, intermediate, and final changes are substantial among the various industries. On the other hand, the secondary price effects for paper and electric power are almost negligible. The most unusual case occurs in the cement industry, where the final price is smaller than the intermediate increase. This occurs because of the high price elasticity for new housing; higher prices in general lead to less housing, which reduces the demand for cement, hence, lowering its price. The relative changes in prices and output for each of the fifteen industry were also compared. As expected, food, paper, petroleum and electric power have relatively low price elasticities, while the results are substantially higher for cement, steel, nonferrous metals and automobiles. It should be mentioned that these implicit price elasticities reflect the demand curves for the final demand products as well as the intermediate goods themselves.

This article presents the author's opinion with regard to George Stigler's views on the practice of political economy in the United States. The evidence presented in the paper of Stigler seems persuasive to me. It is difficult to look at this analysis and still subscribe to the widely held view that election results are highly sensitive to swings in business conditions. Once again we seem to have found that what everybody knows to be true is not necessarily true. Since Stigler's analysis on macro evidence is exhaustive and impressive, suppose we turn to micro evidence to see if it provides any clues to an understanding of why the macro results turn out the way that they do. Here we do gain some insight into attitudes pertinent to Stigler's analysis. What the views of Stigler suggest is that within reasonable tolerances, changes in political sentiment are more apt to reflect the myriad of other factors that bear on voter sentiment. If the swing is outside these tolerances, or if the event is sufficiently visible or discrete, economic developments can exert a substantial effect on citizen support or the incumbent. If therefore, the economic indicators start to waver, the economist may sleep well at night, knowing that in all probability it means little, but the politician may for very good reasons remains awake, wondering if this will be one of those cases that transforms him into a statesman.

The article presents discussions by economists on some papers that are published in the May 1, 1970 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that economist Robert J. Lampman's paper first presents an accounting framework for analyzing the processes of extra market redistribution in the U.S. and then goes on to discuss some current income maintenance reform proposals. The author discusses each of those quite distinct parts of the paper in turn. According to the author, the accounting framework Lampman outlines represents an attempt to classify and measure the processes of redistribution of incomes in much the same way the national income accounts treat processes of production and the market generation of incomes. In any pioneering effort of this sort, difficult conceptual issues arise which require hard decisions and inevitably invite some disagreement as well. Among several such issues that could be raised with Lampman's approach, the author has selected two that especially interest him for discussion.

The article presents discussions by economists on various papers published in the May 1, 1970 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." It discusses effects of tax policy measures when consumers behave rationally and markets function, as they should, in a model embodying conditions of a full and general equilibrium. It states that in the analysis of tax policy, the most important effects to consider are long-term effects. They are what the economy has to live with indefinitely. "Announcement effects" are instantaneous and for that reason evanescent, the transition between announcement and the longer-term equilibrium is by definition transitory. The long run is precisely what economist Lauritis R. Christensen focused on in his paper. Christensen noted that saving is likely to be insensitive to the rate of return and produced two cases, one in which the counterpart of the reduction in revenue caused by the tax incentives was added borrowing from the household sector and the other in which the counterpart was reduced government investment, which resulted in opposite directions of movement of private investment.

This article is a sequel to an earlier study of postwar U.S. financial behavior. The earlier study presented a nineteen-equation quarterly model of supplies and demands in major financial markets. It included detailed discussion of individual supply and demand relationships, but it did not deal with the properties of the model as a whole. The present paper explores the properties of the complete model by means of a series of simulation runs. The article is in three parts following introduction. The first part is a brief and necessarily incomplete summary of the model. The second is the core of the article, a description of the simulation runs and an attempt to account for the principal results in terms of the relevant properties of the underlying equations. The final part contains a brief summary and some remarks on the uses of the simulation results. The simulations which have been discussed suggest a number of propositions about financial markets. these propositions are not intended as realistic predictions of how financial markets behave. They are a set of hypotheses about financial market behavior suggested by the underlying, exploratory model and abstracting from the effects of financial markets on markets for real goods and services.

This article focuses on three papers on the regulated industries. Economist George Wilson seeks to appraise the effect of regulation upon resource allocation in transportation. Economist Roger C. Cramton seeks to test the efficiency of regulation in certain subject-matter areas. Economist Richard E. Caves poses questions with respect to the market performance of the regulated industries and seeks to explore methods by which answers may be sought. In Wilson's discussion of regulatory attitudes toward discrimination he ignores, although he has elsewhere recognized, the tendency for the relatively uniform treatment of distance despite varying conditions of density, terrain, and other factors which affect cost to create a reverse discrimination akin to the type imposed by reluctance to countenance reduced rates for shipments in excess of carload lots. It is, perhaps, surprising that in his discussion of the share-the-traffic criterion he does not call attention to the consequences of enforcing a division of traffic between competing modes when the differences in cost levels are sharp.

The article presents a list of conferences to be held on various topics, from December 27-29, 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts as part of the 76th Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association. A meeting on the theme Principles of Efficiency to be presided over by Paul A. Samuelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The papers to be discussed are The Measurement of Waste by Arnold Harberger and The Efficient Allocation of Capital by Jack Hershleifer. A meeting on the theme Re-Appraisals in American Economic History to be presided over by Douglass North of the University of Washington. The papers to be discussed are A New Look at Hunter's Hypothesis about the Ante-Bellum Iron Industry by Peter Temin, Ante-Bellum Interregional Trade Reconsidered by Albert Fishlow and Canals and Development -- A Discussion of the Issue by Roger Ransom. A meeting on Comparative Costs and Economic Development to be presided over by C. P.Kindleberger of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The papers to be discussed are The Experience of India by Wilfred Malenbaum, The African Situation by Walter A. Chudson and The Case of Brazil by Werner Baer.

This article presents discussion regarding understanding of economics by the whole population. American Economic Association has organized a meeting concerning this issue. According to the author, the far-reaching significance of this development is still only dimly realized. The authors of these three stimulating and instructive papers have referred repeatedly to the National Task Force on Economic Education. members of the American Economic Association realize how much the economics profession owes to the Committee for Economic Development and the Joint Council on Economic Education for initiating this frontal attack on economic ignorance, for putting this Association in the forefront in this nation-wide effort, and for giving the economics profession full academic freedom, for the content of these several programs. Although it is only right that the economists themselves should receive full credit for their professional performances. But without the stimulation, encouragement, and financial support from National Task Force report, Material Evaluation Committee report, and television series it would not have been possible to discuss the merits and limitations of the report of the National Task Force here.

The article discusses the works of Bernard F. Haley and Richard Ruggles on the curricula of economics as a discipline in undergraduate and graduate programs in the U.S. The author of this article feels that there is an omission from Professor Haley's remarks on the elementary course. Professor Haley says that few instructors in the subject are happy with the course as it now is. But he offers no explanation other than that of cultural lag and poor textbooks for this phenomenon. Since it is a rare institution in which a noneconomist dictates the content of the beginning course or the textbook used, the basic question which Professor Haley has not answered is why economists persist in their unhappy ways. Professor Ruggles' paper suggests an approach to the second stage in which economics faculties in the universities will no longer be interested in teaching advanced undergraduate courses since these must perforce be designed for students who either are not concentrating in economics or, if they are, do not plan to go into graduate work in the field.

The article presents a discussion on microanalytic model of the household sector in the U.S. By now the Social Systems Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is well known, and the microanalytic model that is being developed there. This paper presents information about the project's progress. It Is only fair to say that the first big report on the project, Microanalysis of Socioeconomic Systems, contained almost all of what Professor Guy H. Orcutt has had to say. Therefore, in this paper, the author focuses his attention on the section in which he makes an appeal for substantial financial support. Orcutt presents a persuasive case for the usefulness of a fully implemented model of the sort he has described. It would be hard to disagree with his contention that having such a model would be worth a great deal. However, the author feels that there is room for a reasonable doubt about the prospect of achieving a full-scale operating model in anything like the near-term future, even under the favorable budgetary conditions.

The article discusses how much fixed investment is necessary to support alternative rates of growth of potential output in the U.S. in the near future. The author believes that a high rate of capital formation is required if the growth of aggregate productivity and output is to accelerate. The relation between investment and output is two sided. Whether any particular required rate of investment will be accompanied by a high enough level of final demand to use the resulting capacity is another question. And how a particular required rate of investment can in fact be induced is yet another. The data differ a little from those normally used in this kind of enterprise. It is assumed that all technological progress needs to be embodied in newly produced capital goods before there can be any effect on output. A sharp distinction is drawn between actual output and potential output, and the method includes a built-in estimate of the gap between them. The next section of the paper sets out the assumptions of this approach.

The article focuses on the seventy fourth annual meeting of the American Economic Association to be held in New York from 27 to 29, 1961. Executive Committee dinner meeting will be held on December 26, 1961 at 6:00 p.m. On December 27, 1961 there would be a seminar on systems of economic accounts and analysis for urban region. Edgar D. Hoover of Pittsburgh Regional Planning Association would be the chairperson of the seminar. Discussants would include — Meredith B. Givens of Institute of Public Administration and Frederick T. Moore of The Rand Corp. Seminar on rural poverty and national policy would be held at 2:30 P.M. on December 29, 1961. Professor William H. Nichols of Vanderblit University would be the chairperson for the seminar. Papers to be discussed in the seminar include — "Economic Security for Agricultural Labor," by Louis Levine, "Relation of the Low Income Farm Problem to Major National Economic Problems," by Leonard P. Hendrix. Discussants include — professor Leonard P. Adams of Cornell University and John G. McNeely of Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas.

The article presents authors' comments on two papers on teaching economics at high school level in the U.S. by economists Howard S. Ellis and G.L. Bach. Both professors Ellis and Bach have asked for a separate course to be taught in the high schools by competent teachers who understand the spirit of the discipline as well as its techniques. Both have asked that the theory should be made the center of the course. Those who have examined the high school texts and know how heavily they emphasize consumer finance will see this as a distinct step forward. Both have also noted in their papers that the citizen is not in a position to think about public policy without a basic understanding of economics. Professor Ellis has designed his semester course around the needs of the citizen, and Bach has promised that his task force would present a statement of the minimum level of economics essential to good citizenship and reasonably attainable through the high schools. The article agrees that a theory oriented economics course for the citizen is a good first goal in view of the present state of economic illiteracy in the public school system.

The article presents authors' comments on various papers related to anti-trust policies in the U.S. by economists B.A. Adelman, Almarin Phillips and Donald Dewey. Adelman's paper is said to be concerned with correct definition of monopoly and market power and with consistent distinctions among the various kinds of integration that mergers produce. He points that without such definitions and distinctions, policy operates in an atmosphere of chaos. The papers by Phillips and Dewey offer more revolutionary doctrines along with their policy recommendations. Phillips recognizes that price and output in an oligopolistic market may differ quite widely from the results of pure monopoly, depending on the looseness of its structure, and restates this as an attribute of inter-firm organization. The boundary at the other end of the spectrum between excessively competitive and ordinarily competitive industries is however, unclear. Dewey's view of the function and purpose of cartels says that any known cartel has neither actually made any appreciable contribution to greater technical efficiency nor, certainly, has any such efficiency been reflected in cartel prices. The dominant motive in cartel formation is equity. The article does not agree with this theory.

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.

The article presents authors' comments to three research papers on problems of urban metropolis viewed in economic terms by economists Charles M. Tiebout, Benjamin Chinitz and Louis Winnick. Their effort to deal with the problems leads to a number of different discoveries. Winnick apparently has in mind, but does not discuss, an over-all view of the desirability and needs for redevelopment in certain parts of the U.S. metropolitan areas as a benefit to the community. The effect of his paper is to focus on this undiscussed question by way of clearing the underbrush. Chinitz has identified a number of behavioral problems which appear to affect all aspects of the functioning of the urban economy but which arise out of social and institutional patterns common to the city as a whole rather than out of purely economic considerations. Tiebout gives a look at the opposite side of Chinitz' coin, using somewhat the same techniques as Winnick. Instead of focusing on the total reaction of the urban economy to growth and change, he focuses on the patterns of internal distribution. His major contribution appears to be again that of clearing some of the underbrush and making clearer the exact nature of the problems that one can face in pursuing his suggested analysis.

On March 24, 1959, the U.S., Senate and House directed the Joint Economic Committee to conduct a large-scale investigation into the problems of maximum employment, an adequate rate of economic growth and the maintenance of price stability. On January 10, 1960, less than a year later, the Committee and the staff assembled for the purpose concluded its task, having published a Committee Report. It will be some time before the profession has managed to digest the enormous volume of material. This article is particularly concerned with the two central documents, the Committee and Staff Reports. There is a vast amount of useful analysis in the Staff Report and , the hearings and the study papers. The center topics are difficult and complicated in the extreme. There are marks of haste and insufficient integration throughout the Staff Report, insufficient time is the obvious source of many of its shortcomings. Bluntly put, it was ridiculous to expect that a staff could be assembled, hearings held, study projects assigned, and the whole enormous resultant mass digested, in less than a year. Viewed against the background of this limiting factor, the Staff Report emerges as a remarkably good performance.

This article presents a discussion on the research paper "An Empirical Measurement of the Built-In Flexibility of the Individual Income Tax," in the U.S., by Leo Cohen, a professor at the Kansas State College, Kansas. Economists have long believed that the built-in flexibility of the individual income tax is substantial. But this expectation has not been confirmed by the data. The built-in flexibility of any tax can be regarded as the product of the built-in flexibility of the tax base and the marginal rate of tax on the change in the tax base. The built-in flexibility of the individual income tax turns out to be low for two reasons, the proportion of a rise in personal incomes that appears in the tax base is surprisingly low, on the order of 55 percent, and the marginal rate applying to a change in the tax base has never exceeded 31 percent at 1953 rates and 28 percent at present rates, and most of the time it has been substantially lower. As a consequence, the maximum observed built-in flexibility of the individual income tax has been no higher than about 17 percent at 1953 rates and 15.5 percent at present rates in the U.S.

This article presents a discussion on the research paper "Soviet Economic Planning," by Gregory Grossman, a professor at the University of California in Berkeley, California, published in the May 1959 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." Grossman's paper establishes a very stimulating framework for the consideration of Soviet industrial prices. However, the class of quasi-prices is an extremely large one and one should be aware that in stretching the price system to include it, "price system" has been subtly redefined to cover nearly the whole mechanism of guidance and discipline in the Soviet system and it is a mechanism that has little in common with what, price system usually means. Not that there is any objection to this, Grossman has shown well enough that there is little point in studying in the Soviet economy what is usually meant by price system. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that while price systems are consciously employed by Soviet planners as an important determinant of enterprise behavior, they constitute a clumsy class of prices in practice. The reader of Soviet planning literature finds frequent instances of quasi-prices that prompt gross irrationalities and instances where the introduction of new quasi-prices to eliminate old irrationalities simply breeds new ones.