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This paper examines two different approaches to the estimation of the size distribution of wealth. The first section describes new estimates for the distribution in Britain in 1968 using the estate method and discusses the sensitivity of the results to the main assumptions. The second section presents preliminary estimates using the investment data, a method which has not been widely used. In the final section the results obtained for the upper tail of the distribution from the two methods are compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to consider the problem of identifying and estimating the parameters of models in which the hypothesized structure is symmetrical in some of the parameters. This difficulty has been encountered by one of the authors in a study of inventory investment previously published in this Journal, and by the authors of other studies of inventory investment (see BURROWS, 1971 and LOVELL, 1961). A similar situation may well arise in other areas such as the estimation of demand for money functions.[1]
The symmetry problem generally results from the combination of a stock adjustment hypothesis and an adaptive expectations hypothesis, and the nature of the supposed symmetry will be demonstrated using an inventory investment model in Section 2. It is usually argued that the coefficients of such a model cannot be identified so that the structural relationships cannot be estimated. It will be suggested here that the parameters can, in fact, be identified if due attention is paid to the error term on the behavioural equation, and in Section 3 an appropriate estimation method is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Revenue Act of 1954 permitted entrepreneurs for the first time to make use of the double declining balance (DDB) and sum of the year's digits (SYD) methods of depreciation in place of the customary straight line method (SL). The tax advantages from using such methods are well known.(n1) In spite of these advantages, however, the accelerated methods in many cases appear to have been adopted only slowly over the years. Clearly any attempt to determine the effect on investment of such provisions must rely on knowledge of the extent of their use. Unfortunately there is no direct information available, nor do estimates exist, for the two-digit manufacturing industries on the fraction of investment in each year since 1954 written off by accelerated methods. In this paper an attempt is made simultaneously to estimate such figures on an annual basis and to fit a learning curve to them.(n2) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a critique on a cross-section model of economic growth given by researchers P.M. Sommers and D.B. Suits. Out of all the relationships which could be chosen to characterize economic growth, authors Sommers and Suits in their paper select three for their model. They find their model shows "significant statistical relationships among the basic elements of economic growth and describes the broad outlines of the relationships among them. One of their major results is that the rate of growth of per capita gross national product eventually goes to zero in their model and per capita income no longer increases. One of the first questions that comes to mind in models of this kind is the extent of specification error. A question of interest to the readers is how sensitive are the results of Sommers and Suits to plausible though comparatively small changes in their model. The authors have found that a modification of the form of one of the relationships that actually improves the goodness of fit reverses their major result.

IN THIS PAPER the reader will find a review of econometric studies of investment in fixed capital. A review of these studies through 1953 was given in 1957 by J. Meyer and E. Kuh [86], and a detailed review through 1960 was presented by R. Eisner and R. H. Strotz in I963 [36]. In this review we concentrate on recent research on time series of investment expenditures for individual firms and industries. Our point of departure is the flexibLe accelerator model of investment originated by H. B. Chenery [13, 1952] and L. M. Koyck [74, 1954]. In this model attention is focused on the time structure of the investment process. The desired level of capital is determined by long-run considerations. Changes in desired capital are transformed into actual investment expenditures by a geometric distributed lag function--the specification of desired capital has been the subject of a wide variety of alternative theories; the alternative theories do agree on the validity of the flexible accelerator mechanism. Our final objective in reviewing alternative models of investment behavior is to describe and evaluate the treatment of replacement investment. The first part of this review is devoted to studies of investment behavior by individual U.S. manufacturing firms. We focus attention on studies of time series on investment expenditures; time series analysis requires a detailed representation of the time structure of the investment process. These results can be compared directly with results from studies of industry groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a comment on the article "Portfolio Theory and Industry Cost-of-Capital Estimates." The author discusses the differences between this study and a previous one that also presented an estimate for the cost of capital. The author offers a suggestion that would make their estimation approach, which makes use of the capital asset pricing model, more straightforward. Overall, the author states that the conclusions reached are reasonable and are consistent with previous research; however, greater empirical evidence would be beneficial for estimating the cost of capital in general.

The article focuses on four research papers by various economists, which deal with "investment" with different points of departure. R. Eisner deals with the more general estimation problem encountered in investment functions; Frederick M. Scherer investigates performance of investment under different market structures; Edwin Mansfield explores the characteristics, costs, trade-offs of research and development, and the diffusion process of an innovation; and Jora R. Miniasan concentrates on estimating rate of return to research and development expenditures. Scherer tests a few alternative hypotheses relating to the stability of investment and the structure of the industry. He finds that the variability of investment is correlated, among others, with concentration ratios, which is taken to indicate the market structure. Miniasan has made two comments, one dealing with the choice of the dependent variable and the other relating to the, interpretation of the results. The main results are derived from information collected by survey and opinion sampling.

This article reports on attempts to estimate sectoral real physical capital investment functions from timeseries data for the developing economy of postwar Chile. In this article, the models of real physical capital investment behavior are utilized and presented. This models, both putty-putty and putty-clay, are explored in this article and the putty-putty models are further subdivided into two alternatives. The result in obtaining the estimates of real physical capital sectoral investment behavior in postwar Chile are discussed.