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This paper examines the relationship between placement of publications in top five (T5) journals and receipt of tenure in academic economics departments. Analyzing the job histories of tenure–track economists hired by the top 35 US economics departments, we find that T5 publications have a powerful influence on tenure decisions and rates of transition to tenure. A survey of the perceptions of young economists supports the formal statistical analysis. Pursuit of T5 publications has become the obsession of the next generation of economists. However, the T5 screen is far from reliable. A substantial share of influential publications appear in non-T5 outlets. Reliance on the T5 to screen talent incentivizes careerism over creativity.(JEL A14, I23, J44, J62) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at 33 economics books that were published before 1750 and appeared in ten editions or more before 1850. This is a period – before Physiocracy and before the works of Adam Smith – which has been largely neglected in the history of economic thought. The article sheds new light on the early bestselling contributions of German and Italian economists, and on an internationally famous Spanish economist at the time. Also of interest is that three of the bestselling English economists of the period are so forgotten that they do not even have an entry in Wikipedia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses a controversy among marketing students, some who believe that economic theory encompasses marketing theory, and others who think that there is little application of economic theory to marketing problems. The author of this article refers to neoclassic economic literature, particularly that of Alfred Marshall, to prove that economists are aware of the impact that selling efforts and costs have on economic activity, as well as the relationship between increasing returns and selling costs. The article discusses Marshall's work and his treatment of marketing issues and conditions, concluding that the claim that economists have not considered marketing conditions is false.

The article reports on the rise in popularity of consumption economics education and consumer research literature. Additionally, the author reports books have been published which treat advertising as propaganda and seek to make consumers wary of free advice. The similarities between consumption economics and marketing are noted; the criteria for classifying a writer's work as scholarly and scientific are presented. They involve accurate, logical and fair analysis. The work of Leland J. Gordon and Charles S. Wyland in "Economics for Consumers" and "The Economics of Consumption" are evaluated for their criticism of advertising.

The prevalence of civil wars-and the massive human and economic costs that they impose-has attracted the attention of many scholars, including economists. This article briefly introduces three strands in the economics literature on civil war-causes, consequences and solutions-and identifies potential gaps in the existing literature which may be useful to students who are keen on pursuing further research on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a substantial literature in economics and finance has concluded that 'women are more risk averse than men', this conclusion merits investigation. After briefly clarifying the difference between making generalizations about groups, on the one hand, and making valid inferences from samples, on the other, this essay suggests improvements to how economists communicate our research results. Supplementing findings of statistical significance with quantitative measures of both substantive difference ( Cohen's d, a measure in common use in non-Economics literatures) and of substantive overlap (the Index of Similarity, newly proposed here) adds important nuance to the discussion of sex differences. These measures are computed from the data on men, women and risk used in 35 scholarly works from economics, finance and decision science. The results are considerably more mixed and overlapping than would commonly be inferred from the broad claims made in the literature, with standardized differences in means mostly amounting to considerably less than one standard deviation, and the degree of overlap between male and female distributions generally exceeding 80%. In addition, studies that look at contextual influences suggest that these contribute importantly to observations of differences both between and within the sexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many economists have long held that market failures create a gap between social and private returns to research and development (R&D), thereby limiting private incentives to invest in R&D. However, this common belief that firms significantly underinvest in R&D is increasingly being challenged, leading the rationale behind public support for private R&D to be questioned. In this paper, we attempt to clarify the perspectives of two sources: the theoretical literature on endogenous growth, and its recent developments in integrating a geographical dimension, and the empirical literature that measures the social returns to R&D in relation to the private returns. Ultimately, we are able to clearly distinguish among different types of market failures and compare their relative impact on the gap between the private and social returns to R&D. Two main conclusions are reached. First, systematic firm underinvestment in R&D is not demonstrated. Second, even though instances of underinvestment do occur, they are mainly explained by surplus appropriability problems rather than by knowledge externalities. This suggests the need for a new policy mix that employs more demand-oriented instruments and is more concentrated on identifying efficient allocations among activities rather than merely increasing global private R&D investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the history of economists’ treatment of environmental problems prior to the establishment of environmental economics as a separate field in the 1960s. I examine the economics literature from the late eighteenth century onward, searching for an awareness among early economists of both the effects of economic activity on the natural and social environment and the feedback from the environment to the economy. I argue that the way in which economic theory developed made it increasingly relevant for the study of environmental issues and the design of appropriate economic policies. (JEL: B00, Q30, Q50) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic literature is giving new attention to Lionel Robbins' main contributions to economic theory, confined for several decades to the Essay, systematically misunderstood as the manifesto of the epistemology of neoclassical economics, where its underlying ontology characterized by rational maximizing agents, social atomism and a positivistic approach to economics is systematized and laid down. This paper aims at verifying ‘which’ Robbins was received in Italy in the 1930s and 1940s and what was the attitude of Italian economists, from the manifold approaches that characterized the debate in Italy in that period, towards him. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The economics literature includes several critiques of the dominant utilitarian position, as respectively offered by Posner (1979), Rawls (1971), Sen (1987) and institutionalist followers of John Dewey. There is also now a rapidly growing literature on the economics of happiness. Another quite distinctive position of social importance on these issues is provided by Joseph Ratzinger, also known as Pope Benedict XVI. It offers an alternative conception of ontology and teleology, and reflects conceptions of freedom, happiness, man and rationality different from those found in orthodox economics, and different too from those found in the above-mentioned critiques. It intersects with recent writings of Lawson (2003), Nelson (2010) and Tilman (2008).In order to promote critical scrutiny of the a priori positions embedded in contending schools of economic thought, it follows that the implications of this Ratzinger critique should be consciously confronted by economists, including institutionalists, with whom various starting points are shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gul and Pesendorfer provide the best-known and most strident of a set of recent backlashes by economists against methodological revolutions promoted by some behavioural economists and neuroeconomists. Philosophers are likely to read these responses as merely reactionary, especially as their rhetoric goes beyond what their explicit argumentation validly supports. The present paper identifies the accurate insight on Gul and Pesendorfer's part that explains the impact of their philosophically ragged polemic. This centers on importantly different concepts of choice in the psychological and economic literatures. The psychologist's idea of choice descends from a culturally familiar folk construct generally thought to lie within everyone's unreflective personal acquantance. By contrast, the economist's concept of choice refers to abstract sensitivity of behavioral patterns to changes in incentives, typically at the statistical level of populations. It is reasonable to regard this abstract idea as the basic subject matter of economics, just as Gul and Pesendorfer assert. Appreciating the difference between psychological choice and economic choice is crucial for understanding the methodologically schizophrenic character of neuroeconomics. Much of it merely identifies neural correlates of elements from models in the psychology of valuation. However, the neuroeconomics worthy of the name, as constructed by Glimcher and his collaborators, aims to unify economics and neuroscience. It so far fails to do so in an entirely satisfactory way because it falsely assumes that the conception of choice in psychology and economics is already shared. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose -- This paper seeks to contribute to the study of the relationship between savings and investment in a panel of five South Asian countries. Design methodology approach -- A number of unit root tests such as Levin, Lin, and Chu or LLC, Breitung, Im, Pesaran, and Shin or IPS, Fisher-type tests using ADF and Fisher-type tests using PP tests are conducted that confirm the non-stationarity of data. Then the paper applies maximum likelihood-based panel cointegration method to examine the relationship between savings and investment using data on investment and savings for five South Asian developing countries, namely, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka over the period 1973-2007 compiled from the World Development Indicator (WDI) Database 2008 CD-ROM. Findings -- The results obtained suggest that savings and investment are cointegrated, which implies that the Feldstein-Horioka (F-H) puzzle does not hold in this region. It is also found that most of these countries have maintained an international solvency condition. Originality value -- This is another contribution that would enrich the existing literature on the F-H puzzle. The paper includes data that involve the longest sample period. No other study, as of now, has employed the panel cointegration method to study the savings investment relationship in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews Bob Tollison’s conjoined contributions to the scholarly literature in the closely related fields of economic history and history of economic thought, underscoring his integration of public choice and interest-group analysis into the historian’s purview. It identifies the overarching themes of his research and summarizes the major findings of his key publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the abandonment of general equilibrium theory by microeconomists was a mistake. It provides counter arguments to two of the reasons for that abandonment—lack of both generality and consistency with methodological individualism in uniqueness and stability analysis of equilibria—and urges microeconomists to refocus some of their attention on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the authors discuss the inattention to macroeconomist Trevor Swan and his economic growth model in favor of economist Robert Solow's. The authors talk about how only some publications refer to the "Solow-Swan" model instead of the "Solow" model. Particular attention is given to Swan's contribution to neoclassical growth theory, including Swan's background and early work on a growth model in 1950. The authors compare Solow and Swan's growth model from 1956 and examine why Swan's work received less attention than Solow's.

In this paper we briefly review the work of Wassily Leontief, in respect for his memory and appreciation of his accomplishment. His work encompasses and redirects the entire field of economics, including pure theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to explore the potential for using fuzzy logic to analyse economic decision-making under Keynesian uncertainty, and in particular in circumstances where variety of opinion is important. Fuzzy logic is shown to apply where expectations may differ because the nature of the subject matter impedes any 'crisp' way of describing the underlying variables. The particular case of the speculative demand for money is considered, since it explicitly reflects variety of opinion as to whether interest rates are 'high' or 'low'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reader subscription pricing mechanism is the dominant method by which the publication of scholarly journals in economics is funded. This occurs despite the fact that the use of an author charge pricing mechanism, when used in conjunction with a reader charge pricing mechanism, is described in the neoclassical economics literature as a more efficient method for financing journals. The division between the actual financing of economics journals and the theoretical understanding of how journals should be financed highlights deficiencies within the neoclassical economists' understanding of the financing of scholarly journals. In this paper I discuss this divergence in theory and practice in how economists finance their scholarly communication process and the brief attempt by some neoclassical economists to bridge this divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keynesian concepts of probability and uncertainty emphasize the basis of knowledge available to economic decision makers. Conditions of uncertainty, which involve missing evidence or doubtful arguments, are distinguished from probable risk. Beyond this, on the basis of the claim that the future is yet to be created, some authors argue for further distinctions among different kinds of uncertainty. The paper reviews this particular argument, distinguishing it from Keynesian uncertainty theory generally, and provides a critique of its implication that, due to innovation, objective distributions of possible events do not generally exist at the time of economic decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary approaches in economics have gathered increasing support over the last 25 years. Despite an impressive body of literature, economists are still far from formulating a coherent research paradigm. The multitude of approaches in evolutionary economics poses problems for the development of an evolutionary economic geography. For the most part, evolutionary economic geography imports selective concepts from evolutionary biology and economics and applies those concepts to specific problems within economic geography. We discuss a number of problems with this approach and suggest that a more powerful and appealing alternative requires the development of theoretically consistent models of evolutionary processes. This article outlines the contours of an evolutionary model of economic dynamics where economic agents are located in different geographical spaces. We seek to show how competition between those agents, based on the core evolutionary principles of variety, selection and retention, may produce distinct economic regions sharing properties that differentiate them from competitors elsewhere. These arguments are extended to illustrate how the emergent properties of economic agents and places co-evolve and lead to different trajectories of economic development over space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We comment on the Shoham, Powers, and Grenager survey of multi-agent learning and game theory, emphasizing that some of their categories are important for economics and others are not. We also try to correct some minor imprecisions in their discussion of the economics literature on learning in games. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the distribution of economic research as catalogued in the Journal of Economic Literature across countries of the world and attempts to explain those patterns. We report the number of articles published on each country and estimate a series of regressions to understand this pattern. We find that measures of a country's size (physical and economic), connections with the outside world and data availability explain much of the pattern of research. We also find that tourism receipts, whether English is an official language, and the number of economic research institutions are significantly correlated with the amount of research done on a country. After controlling for all the variables, we find only three regions (all in Africa) with significantly less research published by economists in Journal of Economic Literature cataloged articles than North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editor's Note The Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) regularly reviews books of interest to the economics profession. The Economic Report of the President (ERP) falls under that purview. I have asked a handful of very prominent economists to review the 2006 ERP. Reviewers were chosen to reflect expertise on what I guessed would be key issues. The ERP in principle should provide an accurate assessment of the consensus professional views of economists on any given issue, based on the research to date. Reviewers were asked to evaluate whether the discussion in the ERP in fact accurately summarizes what we as economists know? Reviewers were given free rein over what material they would review in the ERP but were urged to focus on their areas of particular expertise. In the reviews that follow, Martin Feldstein reviews the overview chapter as well as topics relating to macroeconomics. Alan Auerbach reviews the ERP's discussion of tax-related issues, while Ken Rogoff reviews the ERP's discussion of international economic topics. Rebecca Blank writes on labor market issues in the ERP, and Michael Katz reviews the ERP's discussion of health care issues. Many thanks to the reviewers for the quick turnaround. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a natural curiosity within the economic academic community regarding who are the most frequent contributors to the economic literature. This paper presents an analysis of the top publishers in the ‘Blue Ribbon Eight’ economics journals, over the past 50 years (1954-2003), plus two 25-year subperiods of 1954-1978 and 1979-2003. While it is tempting to use these results to rank economics departments, this paper is meant to be an historical appreciation of these authors and journals and not meant to imply any type of current ranking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Despite many years of active research in the field and a number of fruitful applications, agent-based modeling has not yet made it through to the top ranking economic journals. In this paper we investigate why. We look at the following problematic areas: (i) interpretation of the simulation dynamics and generalization of the results, and (ii) estimation of the simulation model. We show that there exist solutions for both these issues. Along the way, we clarify some confounding differences in terminology between computer science and economic literature. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Donald F. Gordon hypothesized that mathematical complexity in economics is inversely related to operationalism. Here we (i) operationalize Gordon's hypothesis, (ii) test for the significance of trends in complexity for the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and (iii) test Gordon's hypothesis by conducting analyses of the contents of articles from the American Economic Review (AER), as well as the contents of articles citing the AER articles. The results do not refute the hypothesis that complexity crowds out operationalism in economics. Additionally, the presence of significant, positive trends toward complexity suggests that the magnitude of the crowding out is on the rise in these journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents a list of readings that may be especially useful to teachers of undergraduate economics, as well as other articles that are of broader cultural interest. 'The Economist' has another of those wonderful surveys by Frances Cairncross. This one is a survey of retirement titled 'Forever Young.' As usual it is a combination of surprising facts and clear analysis. A wonderful article illustrating entry and competition is 'In Chinatown, a $10 Trip Means War: Weary Owners Struggle to Stay Afloat in Cutthroat Competition' by Michael Luo, in the February 21, 2004 issue of the 'The New York Times'. To get the feel of a real Dutch auction, in which the auctioneer starts with a high price and then reduces it until a bidder accepts, students might enjoy an article by Elizabeth Pope, 'Let a Billion Flowers Bloom' in the Travel section of the March 28, 2004 issue of 'The New York Times'. Paul R. Portney labels his 'Market-based Approaches to Environmental Policy' as a refresher course. It belongs on the reading list of undergraduate courses. A number of economists are taking advantage of the Internet to post reflections and connections to economic news and events. Bill Goffe's Resources for Economists on the Internet even has a section for blogs and commentaries.

We measure the past production of research articles by current members of European economics institutions. All EconLit journals are used, weighted to reflect differences in quality. Both a long (1971–2000) and a short (1996–2000) time period are considered. We also provide production indices that take into account the authors' career length. The total output of each research center is measured as well as its production per member. The focus is on 600 centers from eighteen European countries (EU 14, Israel, Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey). European centers are compared to the top sixty U.S. economics departments. Statistics regarding the concentration of article production across researchers, institutions, and countries are provided, as well as on publication habits. (JEL: A14, L11, R32) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I study the production of academic research by economics departments and economists. Worldwide rankings are provided based on both citations and publications. These rankings reveal a dominant position of the United States in the production of economics literature. Over time, however, the extent of this dominance is decreasing. (JEL: A10, A14) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is still debatable whether scientific diversity is a virtue or a disadvantage for the development of a discipline. Nonetheless, diversity among scientists with respect to their journal quality perceptions plays an important role in hiring and promotion decisions. In this article we examine the degree of diversity within economics based on the journal quality perceptions of 2,103 AEA economists worldwide. Specifically, we empirically test for factors that might explain differences in an economist's journal quality perceptions. These factors include an economist's geographic origin, school of thought, journal affiliation, field of specialization and research orientation. Indeed, we find that a significant degree of diversity in journal quality perceptions exists between economists that belong in different subgroups. These results might explain the frequent debates in tenure and promotion committees where journal standings are used for the evaluation of a researcher's output. (JEL: A12, D12) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on factors contributing to growth of small and medium size business enterprises (SME). Discussion of the behaviorist approach to corporate growth; Details of corporate growth discussed in classic economic theory; Analysis of economist Robert Gibrat's approach to corporate growth in his Law of Proportional Effect.

In this paper we point to special problems faced by economists in ‘peripheral’ fields (like development economics), particularly those at early stages of their career, in publishing their research results in mainline journals, and how this creates a kind of vicious circle that may be damaging to our profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant discourse in economic theory in Great Britain from the 1940s to the 1970s was Keynesian. The making of economic policy resulted from a complex interplay of economic, political and personal factors. The making of macroeconomic policy implies decisions made by politicians on the basis of advice from generalist Treasury officials. The problem for the substantial literature on Keynesian ideas and macroeconomic policy is to check whether economic advisers within the Keynesian tradition managed to influence the final decision takers. Analytical approaches need to be made explicit so that opportunistic selection of evidence, the use of initial assumptions to determine conclusions and the creation of straw women can all be avoided.

Analyzes rhetorical practice in two essays by Argentinean economist Raul Prebisch, who fostered the construction of a theoretical framework that influenced Latin American development policies after World War II. Historical context and argumentative structure of the essays; Reception of Prebisch's ideas among specialized and lay readers.

This article focuses on the article written by Russian statistician and economist Eugen Slutsky that appeared in an Italian journal "Giornale delgi economisti." The first appreciation of Slutsky's work in the economic literature was economist Valentino Dominedo's long 1933 paper on the theory of demand. Dominedo devoted the last pages of this article to Slutsky's mathematical and theoretical exposition, and he was certainly the first author to have grasped the importance of Slutsky's paper. In an early article economist Umberto Ricci had considered a case in which a person's utility function was additively separable in the quantities. Instead of assuming diminishing marginal utility for all commodities, Ricci allowed one of the commodities to have at first increasing and subsequently decreasing marginal utility. The first published recognition of Slutsky's important paper in America may be found in Henry Schultz's 1935 article, "Interrelations of Demand, Price, and Income." Actually, it is known that Milton Friedman, a young research assistant to Schultz at Chicago, participated actively in this article and in the subsequent 1938 book.

While literature on the research productivity of economists in general is significant, very little is known about the research productivity of black economists. This paper examines the research productivity of black Ph.D. economists employed in academic institutions. Based upon bibliographic data reported in the Journal of Economic Literature's (JEL) EconLit Database, we provided rankings across four different measures of research productivity. We also provided a ranking of Ph.D.-granting institutions based on the number of black economists produced, and on the number of black economist alumni who are ranked as individual researchers. We find that William Darity Jr. is the highest ranked black economist, regardless of the measure of research productivity used. Darity's alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has produced the largest number of ranked black economists. Other institutions that have been quite successful in producing ranked black economists include Harvard, University of California-Berkeley, Stanford, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Property rights are fundamentals to economic analysis. There is, however, no consensus in the economic literature about what property rights are. Economists define them variously and inconsistently, sometimes in ways that deviate from the conventional understandings of legal scholars and judges. This article explores ways in which definitions of property rights in the economic literature diverge from conventional legal understandings, and how those divergences can create interdisciplinary confusion and bias economic analyses. Indeed, some economists' idiosyncratic definitions of property rights, if used to guide policy, could lead to suboptimal economic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the journal of economic literature related to time discounting and time preference in the U.S. It defines intertemporal choices as decisions involving tradeoffs among costs and benefits occurring at different times. In this article, the authors review empirical research on intertemporal choice, and present an overview of recent theoretical formulations. In section 2, the authors review the perspectives on intertemporal choice of John Rae and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century economists, and describe how these early perspectives interpreted intertemporal choice as the joint product of many conflicting psychological motives. In section 3, they examine the various assumptions underlying the discounted-utility (DU) model. The remaining sections reviews DU anomalies, the numerous alternative theoretical models and reviews attempts to estimate discount rates.

Discusses the life and times of economist Zvi Griliches of Kaunas, Lithuania, and his contribution to economics literature. Griliches' interest in agriculture; Views on the use of price series and hedonic analysis of economics; Griliches' elaboration and extension of the basic framework for growth accounting, total factor productivity and equivalently; Views on various econometric issues, in particular, distributed lags.

If there are people born under a lucky star, there must be books that are lucky too. Foundations of Economic Analysis, was one such. Unlike a biological embryo, this work had no definite moment of conception. Gradually, over the period 1936 to 1941, it got itself evolved. As the author was mastering the existent corpus of economic theory, he recognized that a limited number of qualitative truths obtained, along with a greater number of indefinite relationships. Puzzled to understand this, the author ransacked the mathematical libraries of Chicago, Illinois and Harvard, Massachusetts to explain to him what made the difference. According to the author, publications flowed merrily from his pen. It was his good luck to be appointed as the first proper economist to Harvard's prestigious Society of Fellows, 24 youthful princes in all fields, free to work on whatever they liked, but forbidden for three years to work toward any degree or Ph.D. dissertation. For the author, those 1937-40 years were veritable heaven, and had he been offered the Faustian bargain of staying a Junior Fellow forever, he would have joyfully embraced it, according to him.

There are only a few fields in economics whose antecedents can be traced to a single, seminal article. One such field is natural resource economics, which is currently experiencing an explosive revival of interest; its origin is widely recognized as Harold Hotelling's 1931 paper, "The Economics of Exhaustible Resources." Although Hotelling's paper appears a half-century ago, the current wave of interest in natural resource economics is less than 10 years old. Events of the 1930's of course brought other concerns, and serious attention to problems of resource depletion had to wait for the energy and environmental. Though the basic idea is first stated non-technically, much of the article is an exercise in the calculus of variations--a mathematical tool not commonly found in economics journals until the 1950's, at the earliest. He thus showed that the competitive resource owner would deplete at a socially optimal rate. Therefore, the conservationists' pleas for public intervention cannot be based on any inherent tendency for competition to exploit a resource too rapidly, assuming no divergence between the private and social discount rates.

The purpose of this article is to present in nontechnical language an overview of some of the recent economic literature relating to women. The article identifies the range of topical interests of economists and spells out some of the findings. The authors' own views are contained primarily in the section on market differentiation (Kohen) and in the final section (Kahne). The review cannot cover all of the economic areas bearing on women. It looks primarily at the literature relating to women's economic roles and omits a number of areas where a general theoretical or analytic framework also has relevance for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the view on the article by Paul Samuelson, published in a 1971 issue of "Journal of Economic Literature." The author objects to Samuelson twinning Piero Sraffa's, an economist, name with that of Wassily Leontief, another economist, in order to label for their age. According to the author, Sraffa's work "Production of Commodities By Means of Commodities," does not appear to have penetrated very deeply into the consciousness of the economics profession in North America. To give a person's name to an age is to concede a commensurate measure of fame of notoriety to that person. Piero Sraffa stand in that tradition that gave us a model of price determination in which relative price configuration is a supply side phenomena.. It is a tradition in which distributive shares are exogenous to the commodity-price determining apparatus and also outside the ambit of the marginal productivity principle. Sraffa's classical observation on the predominant influence of cost of production in the determination of normal value of commodities, was made in the course of discussion of the "laws of returns" that subsumed both the variable-proportions case and returns to scale.

The paper presents abstracts of various articles published in the December 1973 issue of the Journal of Economic Literature. The article Prestige Economics by H.W. Arndt focuses on a question whether economists have given sufficient attention to "status" or "prestige" as a motive in economic life. It is suggested that prestige is relatively important in primitive societies where the range of goods available for enjoyment is narrow, so that any surplus above minimum needs tends, to be used for display and again in affluent societies as affluence comes up against the satiability of human wants. The article "Impact of Space on World Development," by G. Stever discusses the idea of space becoming not just a medium but also an exploitable resource. Therefore what is necessary is a space ethic to guide actions and decisions. It attempts to show how the space ethic can help identify the proper aims of development and cope with change caused by space activities. The paper "Teaching the History of Economic Thought in the USSR," by V.G. Treml and D.M. Gallik consists of two parts. The first part outlines the history of teaching of economics and of history of economic thought with particular reference to Moscow University.

Spiegel's professional life and contributions were outstanding and worth remembering. Spiegel's emigration from Europe to the United States was typical of many other émigré economists who were threatened by the turmoil in Europe during the 1930s. Spiegel was trained as a lawyer but not allowed to practice his trade simply because he was Jewish. But on arrival in the United States, he refocused his abilities from the legal field to the academy as an academic economist with a specialty in the fledgling field of development economics. Spiegel's originality as an historian of economics is revealed by his economists-on-other-economists projects that established a new genre of literature in economics. Spiegel's The Growth of Economic Thought is a masterful treatise on the history of economics, it is his greatest legacy and is still used in college teaching. This book is in print and supplies a descriptive rather than analytic approach to the story of how economics developed. In its breadth of coverage and links to sociology, philosophy, and even law, it is one of the best balanced treatments available. The current plans of economists in the People's Republic of China to translate the work into Chinese are noteworthy. As might be expected, Spiegel loved to collect books, and in his personal life with Cecile set aside time for warm companionship and a cultured life style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles economist Henry George from the point of view of economic theory. In order to understand Henry George's central message, it is important to anchor it in the ocean of economic literature. Henry George was not making a modest tax proposal. He was not an expert in real estate taxation, as one might think upon reading many renditions of his scheme. Henry George proposes a fiscal constitution which, due to the single tax requirement and the specific meaning he gives to the notion of land is indeed a self-enforcing system of rules. It appears that the George system is particularly well-suited for promoting economic development, and most particularly in those precise circumstances where a market economy is in need of further growth and development Criticism of Henry George's tax proposal is widespread. In principle, there are three basic substantive arguments aimed at his work and one that had better be termed "rhetorical." Joseph A. Schumpeter, who also has lavish praise for George, offers all four arguments. The first quote from Schumpeter contains both the first and substantive argument as well as the rhetorical charge typically leveled against George.

Much has been written in recent years concerning the issue of capital punishment. The major argument on the side of the retentionists appears to revolve around deterrence. Using postulates from modern welfare economics the authors demonstrate that the deterrence question is largely irrelevant. Attention is also given to extracting materials from the writings of earlier economists from Petty to Mill which may be helpful in resolving the issue. The conclusion which emerges is that capital punishment is not justifiable on economic grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When discussions in economics turn to the problem of land, its allocation, and monopoly rent, the ideas of economist Henry George quickly appear on the agenda: George's association with land tenure systems is well established. It is as though his arguments could be applied to little else. Because of this single-minded association there are some who would relegate George and his theories to a position among those who offered interesting yet impractical schemes for the solution of social ills. Still others find new applications for his ideas and thus view his writings as a valuable contribution to the field of economics. In this article authors show how George's policy pronouncements regarding property rights relate themselves to problems of water quality and the current literature in that field. By so doing, they present an argument that leads inexorably to the conclusion that his contribution may be a foundation for the analysis of any environmental resource. According to authors, perhaps the most common criticism made of economists is the failure to state explicitly the assumptions. However, the failure to recognize the contributions of Henry George to environmental analysis has occurred because of a lack of clearly stated assumptions.

In this article the author discusses dichotomies found in scholar Friedrich August von Hayek's economic literature concerning monetary theory. The monetary theory of the trade cycle, from which his ideas on information and coordination developed, was long regarded as one of those blind alleys of economic speculation. In comparison to Robert E. Lucas' business cycle theory, Hayek's monetary theory of the trade cycle looks rich in structure and challenging in its claims and even various recent examinations in recent years indicate that it merits closer scrutiny in its own right. Hayek's theory asserts that governments should refrain from stimulating booms and counteracting recessions with active monetary policy, as this only causes or aggravates crises. Hayek favored credit restriction, even though he was skeptical about the practicality of a neutral money policy. Hayek's explanation of the business cycle contains a specific combination of a Wicksellian cumulative process, a Bohm-Bawerkian structure of production, a Cantillon effect of changes in the money supply on the price structure and a Ricardo effect of a shortage of consumption goods on the production of investment goods. The purpose of this article is to analyze Hayek's dichotomy by dividing his theory into four sections namely its Wicksellian origin, its specific flaws, its inconsistencies with his policy conclusions and its role in the progress of economic theory.