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This article presents views on papers presented by Michael Spence and Richard Zeckhauser and that of William Brainard and F. T. Dolber during a panel discussion focused on optimum insurance revisions and on the link between social risk and risk premia, respectively. Martin J. Bailey agrees that the Spence-Zeckhauser paper presents a theory of optimum insurance provisions when all premia are actuarial: utility-maximizing zero-cost insurance, with and without moral hazards, variously specified. On the other hand, the Brainard-Dolbear study recognizes the well-developed theory of risk and presented a good review of the broad sweep of the subject and offers a comprehensive view of the insurance market. Donald D. Hester views the approach undertaken in the study is very restrictive for they are forced to assume that all individuals have identical prospects, resources, and utility functions. Finally, the studies presented proposals which attempted to: (1) apply to the micro-economic expected utility apparatus in a general equilibrium context; (2) to permit assignment of laborers to other employees; and (3) to establish futures markets in human capital are heady stuff.

Presents a program for the 87th Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association which will be held in San Francisco, California on December 27-30, 1974.

Presents a preliminary announcement of program schedules for the Eighty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association on December 27-30, 1973 in New York.

This section presents abstracts of papers which were published in the July 1965 issue of "Review of Economic Studies." In the model postulated in the paper "The Relationship Between Output and Employment in British Manufacturing Industries," businessmen are assumed to treat their output, capital and technology as exogenous in the short run. The endogenous variables are the level of employment and the effective number of hours worked per man. In the paper "Business Saving and Errors in Variables," cross-section, double-logarithmic, least squares regressions of business saving on profit are estimated for samples of companies drawn from the brewing and textiles industries, and from manufacturing industry as a whole, in Great Britain for each year 1949-63. The paper "Optimum Growth in an Aggregative Model of Capital Accumulation" elaborates the problem of optimum saving first discussed by F. Ramsey in 1928. For this purpose a centralized, closed economy is postulated; it is assumed to be adequately described by the aggregative, neoclassical model first closely analyzed by R. M. Solow. According to the paper "Entry in a Cournot Market," the theory of Cournot equilibrium was developed as a general theory with perfect competition and monopoly as special limiting cases. According to Cournot, as the number of firms in an industry increases, industry output increases, the output of any one producer becomes a smaller proportion of total industry output, price falls, and in the limit price and output approach that of a perfectly competitive market.

This section presents abstracts of papers which were published in the April 1965 issue of "Review of Economic Studies." The paper "Existence of Optimal Programs of Accumulation for an Infinite Time Horizon" develops necessary conditions for the existence of an optimal growth path in a general model of the Ramsey type which includes population growth and technical progress. "Size and Growth of Firms" measures the proportionate growths of a large sample of British companies from the period 1951 to 1960 and concludes that the larger the company the greater its proportionate rate of growth. "Neoclassical Growth and the Efficient Program of Capital Accumulation" is concerned with the problem of optimum capital accumulation in a two sector growth model, with a utility function depending on consumption. In the paper "Uncertain Lifetime, Life Insurance, and the Theory of the Consumer," a simple model of utility maximization is used to study the effects of lifetime uncertainty on consumption and saving. Under the assumption that the consumer is familiar with mortality tables, two cases are investigated. The paper "Traditional Capital Theory" deals consecutively with the two main problems in traditional capital theory, the origin of the rate of interest and the nature of capital as a factor of production.

This section presents abstracts of studies on labor economics which were published in the October 1964 issue of The Review of Economic Studies. The paper titled The Determinants of Wage Rate Changes and the Inflation-Unemployment Trade-off for the U.S., by G. L. Perry, presents empirical estimates from a model explaining the behavior of average wage rates. The paper titled Wage Structure and Structural Unemployment, by M. Reder, explains that wage structures and employment structures are correlative concepts and must be studied as an inter-related system. The paper titled The Wage-Price Process in Modern Industry, by Otto Eckstein, presents a theory of the wage-price process in manufacturing industry which is derived from the growing volume of empirical results on wage determination, productivity behavior and price formation.

Presents the schedule for the 83rd Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association at the Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan on December 27 to 30, 1970.

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 the university is a part of the existing socioeconomic system with specific functions, among which that are mentioned by authors of papers published in the present issue of the journal, to socialize students as wage-workers is only one. Another is to inculcate into the student, a potential future leader, member of the intellectual elite, teacher of future students, precisely the point of view that underlies economics curriculum. Authors of those papers follow with iron logic that the university is not going to accept, let alone promote, an alternative curriculum, which begins by rejecting, or calling into question all basic institutions, relations and results of the existing system. It is true that under stress, such as that which developed on many campuses last year, powers-that-be will make concessions and often will promise more concessions. It is significant that economics department refused to recognize it and academic authorities denied permission for it to abandon the grading system, which authors criticized so effectively in their papers.

This article presents comments on papers by economists Frank de Leeuw and Hyman P. Minsky. De Leeuw's paper is a very impressive one. He not only displays a mastery of monetary theory and statistical technique but also shows considerable artistry in the construction of his model. He has managed to include in his model the main institutional features of the complex financial system of the U.S., while keeping the scale of his model down to manageable proportions. Anyone who has tried his hand at realistic financial analysis will realize that is in itself a considerable achievement. Minsky's paper is an equally interesting one, though entirely different both in style and content. He argues that the ratio of debt to income tends to rise progressively during a long period of prosperity interrupted only by minor recessions. The increase in debt ratios may operate as a drag on the rate of investment and slow down or bring to a halt the growth of demand. Of course, the system may simply move toward an equilibrium debt income ratio and continue to grow to scale. The effects of debt on the system are analogous to those of accumulating capital in simple capital-stock-adjustment models.

The article presents the author's comments on various papers on income distribution. It discusses various aspects of capital output and wage sharing as written in the research paper of economist Sidney Weintraub. The paper is said to have uncovered a constant through both the short and the long run. This has been accomplished by calculating the labor share of the gross business product rather than of national income or of private national income. However, this means that Weintraub has added to the normal recipients of national income-labor and capital-government as a recipient of indirect business taxes and capital consumption. These two new non-labor recipients grew relatively in the depression of the thirties, thus balancing the disappearance of profits and cutting down labor's normal rise in a deep recession. The article also discusses on the research paper given by economists Oswald Brownlee and Alfred Conrad. Their paper evaluates the distributive effects of inflation as compared to those of several policies alternative to inflation including a tight money policy, a policy of increased federal taxes, and a policy of decreased federal expenditures.

This article presents the author's views regarding the critique by professor Clarence L. Barber on his article "The Cyclical Turning Points in an Open Economy: Canada, 1927-1939." The author argues that much of the disagreement between him and Barber and arises from differing treatment of the basic statistics. Barber has worked from seasonally corrected data, whereas the author has preferred the original series. In addition, in some of his citations Barber seems to prefer annual averages, whereas the author has stressed the monthly details. Barber is also unconvinced that the declining prices in the pulp and paper industry could have been significant, particularly since the value of production and exports continued to increase. However, following the 1928 newsprint price war the Canadian index of the prices of securities of paper companies dropped from 160.0 to 97.1, while the entire index of Canadian stock prices rose from 177.0 to 227.3. The price drop put pressure on profit margins, and led to widespread bankruptcies in the industry after 1929.

The article presents several books related to population and migration. The book "The Urban Community," edited by E.W. Burgess, focuses on the American Sociological Society meeting that was held in 1925. The meeting centered upon the sociology of the city. It is supposed that as a text or book of readings this volume will have a place, but the book would have been better if it included matter other than Sociological Society papers. Some other books mentioned in the article are: "The Suicide Problem in the United States," by A.D. Frenay; "The Racial Characters of the Swedish Nation," edited by H. Lundborg and F.J. Linders; "Problems of Overpopulation," by M.H. Sanger; "The Natural Increase of Mankind," by J.S. Sweeney; "Negro Labor in the United States," by C.H. Wesley; "Migration Movements, 1920-1924," "Statistical Report on the External Migration of the Dominion of New Zealand for the Year 1926," "Statistik Des Deutschen Reiches: Die Bewegung Der Bevölkerung in Den Jahren 1922 Und Die Ursachen Der Sterbefälle in Den Jahren 1920-23."

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 presents some abstracts of published materials concerning business organizations, managerial economics and marketing. The first paper entitled "Advertising and Concentration: An Empirical Investigation," by H.M. Mann, J.A. Henning and J.W. Meehan, Jr. investigates the relationship between the degree of product differentiation, measured by traceable advertising expenditures as a percentage of the sales revenue of the dominant firms in fourteen four-digit industries defined by the Standard Industrial Classification and the four-firm concentration ratio of the fourteen industries in 1954, 1958 and 1963. The results showed that the intensity of advertising effort was positively and significantly associated with seller concentration. The paper entitled "Inventories and Turnover: A Cross-Section Study," by D.J. Smyth and J.M. Samuels provides an analysis of the relationship between companies' inventories and their turnover, investigating the extent to which these are realized economies of scale in inventory holding.

The article presents several abstracts of research papers related to statistical methods, econometrics and social accounting. The first paper "Estimating Nonnegative Matrices From Marginal Data," by M. Bacharac, investigates a method of adjustment based on multiplying the rows and columns of the initial estimate by positive numbers. The paper establishes existence and uniqueness properties for biproportional estimates. The second paper "The Choice of Instrumental Variables in the Estimation of Economy-Wide Econometric Models, by F.M. Fisher, is concerned with an important class of problems encountered in the estimation of economy-wide econometric models. The third paper "Restrictions on the Reduced Form and the Rank and Order Conditions," by F.M. Fisher, observes that the presence of an over-identified equation in a system of simultaneous equations leads to restrictions on the reduced form. It also observes that such restrictions also exist even if no equation is over-identified and proves a theorem on their number.

The article discusses the abstracts of several papers on economics published in the 1965 issue of the journal "Kyklos." The first paper of the journal "On the Interpretation of the Just Price," by Samuel Hollander, argues that the just price is related to production costs within the medieval context of social status. The second paper of the journal is "Today's Circumstances and Yesterdays Theories: Malthus on Services," by J.J. Spengler. The third paper of the journal "Sources of Variation in the Capital-Output Ratio in the United States Private Business Sector, 1909-1959," by John E. La Tourette, examines the source of variation in the capital coefficient for the United States private business sector during the 1909-1959 periods. In the paper "Theme and Variations--Remarks on the Kaldorian Distribution Formula," by K.W. Rothschild, the author opines that the Keynesian distribution formula is very useful when considered as a tautological formulation of the coherence between investment, saving and income as circulatory components.

The article discusses the abstracts of several papers on economics published in the May 1965 issue of the journal "International Economic Review." The first article "Two Models of the British Economy: A Fragment of a Critical Survey," by Marc Nerlove, represents a portion of survey covering macroeconometric models of the Klein-Tinbergen Variety; that is, model based on time series and fundamentally of a Keynesian nature. The second article of the journal "Innovational Intensity and Factor Bias in the Theory of Growth," by Gustav Ranis and John C.H. Fei, makes a rigorous presentation of some well-known concepts of innovational intensity and bias and demonstrates the existence of a linear relationship between them. The third article is "Some Properties of the Closed Linear Model of Production," by Sidney G. Winter. Four assumptions are typically used to characterize the most general type of closed linear production model: convexity and closedness of the production cone, costless disposal, impossibility of something from nothing, every commodity is producible.

This section presents abstracts of articles on money and labor published in the September 1965 issue of the journal American Economic Review. The article titled The Relative Stability of Monetary Velocity and the Investment Multiplier by Albert Ando and Franco Modigliani modifies both the model and the procedure employed by Milton Friedman and David Meiselman in their earlier work in order to assess their results and their interpretation as evidence for the relative stability of monetary velocity and the investment multiplier. Meanwhile, the paper titled Tests of the Relative Importance of Autonomous Expenditures and Money by Michael DePrano and Thomas Mayer presents a critique of a study by Milton Friedman and David Meiselman which claimed that the stock of money is far more important in determining income than are autonomous expenditures. This critique covers the period 1929-63 using sub-periods as well as data for the whole period. The main criticism of the Friedman-Meiselman study is that it defines autonomous expenditures in a way which includes many endogenous elements. Furthermore, the paper Surplus Agricultural Labor and Development: Facts and Theories by Morton Paglin used the Indian data to challenge the widely held assumption that disguised unemployment and surplus labor are prevalent in the agricultural sector of underdeveloped countries.

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.

This section presents commentaries on articles about Chinese planning and economy published in the May 1973 issue of the American Economic Review. It is enlightening to learn from Dwight H. Perkins' paper about the problems which the People's Republic of China has had in formulating and implementing consistent plans for development. Perkins also raised but does not resolve some of the central issues of planning and plan implementation in China. Imports can be an efficient source of goods which can relieve unforeseen bottlenecks and exports can permit the utilization of capacity which might otherwise remain idle. Perkins' argument may be interpreted as meaning that the signals of resource misallocation or plan disruption are somehow clearer and stronger when foreign trade is not available as an offset. With regards to the paper by Ta-Chung Liu and Kung-Chia Yeh, it is clear that they have employed considerable ingenuity in assessing the overall economic performance of China. However, the source of the differences in the incremental fixed capital-output ratios may not be in the differences in the mix of industries and projects in China as compared to other countries, but in the relative inefficiency with which investment projects are carried out.

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 discussions by economists on some papers that were published in the May 1, 1970 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that it should come as no surprise to anyone to find that there are some basic problems remaining in industrial organization. What is surprising is the extent to which papers published in the present issue of the journal agree on the nature and causes of these problems. These papers argue that the basic concerns of economists are empirical and difficulties in studies arise both from inadequate data and from a theoretical apparatus that may not permit very clear predictions to be made about firm and industry behavior. While suggesting how one should proceed in his study of industrial organization, authors part company, but only to a degree. Economist E.T. Grether suggests that one must broaden ones sights and examine more closely internal factors in the organization and decision processes of the firm. This kind of extension, when combined with the traditional market-structure approach, may provide a theoretical basis sufficient to deal even with large and diversified companies.

The article presents a list of new books related to economics and business. Some books related to general economics are "University Economics," by A.A. Alchian and W.R. Allen; "Positive Economics and Policy Objectives," by T.W. Hutchison and "The Age of Inflation," by J. Rueff. Some books related to price and allocation theory, income and employment theory, related empirical studies and history of economic thought are "The Growth of Television Ownership in the United Kingdom Since the War-A Lognormal model," by A.D. Bain; "External Economies in Production," by P. Bohm; "Economics Choice of Human and Physical Factors in Production," by G.K. Boon is an attempt to measure the micro-economic and macro-economic possibilities of variation in factor proportions of productions. "Economic Growth in a Free Market," by G.H. Borts and J.L. Stein; "Balanced Distribution," by G. Erickson; "The Life of John Maynard Keynes," by R.F. Harrod; "History of Economic Doctrines-An Introduction to Economic Theory," by E. Heimann and "Consumption Patterns in Israel," by N. Liviatan.

The article presents titles of new books related economics. Books related to general economics include — "USA and Its Economic Future--A Twentieth Century Survey," by A.B. Barach and R. Mooley, "The Hidden Face of Free Enterprise--The Strange Economics of the American Businessman," by J.R. Bunting, "The Nation's Economic Objectives," edited by E.O. Edwards, "Economic Growth--An American Problem," edited by P.M. Gutmann and "The Economic System" by J.M. Kuhlman and G.S. Skinner. Books on price, income and employment include — "A Macroeconomic Theory of Workable Competition," by C.E.A. Ferguson, "Aggregation in Economic Analysis--An Introductory Survey," by H.A.J. Green, "The Demand for Physical Capital: An Application of a Wealth Model," by F.S. Hammer, "Outline of Price Theory," by A.M. Levenson and B.S. Solon "Economic Thought of Mahatma Gandhi," edited by A.S. Mathur and J.S. Mathur, "Income: Analysis and Policy," by M.H. Rose and Economic Trends and Indications," by B. Kapasi.

The article presents a discussion on the paper titled Determinants of Inventive Activity written by Jacob Schmookler and Oswald Brownlee. Inventive activity may be very much affected by other economic variables, and moreover, it is likely to lag rather than lead some of the more important ones. However, the main new point of the current paper, while related to the previous work, is really different. In this paper, Schmookler and Brownlee present the hypothesis that the rate of inventive activity, measured by patents granted, depends on expected absolute returns, derive from it the implication of a positive correlation between the number of patents and the size of the industry, and find such a correlation holding for a substantial number of years. The author of this paper argues that the implication tested is in fact consistent with many alternative hypotheses. A much stronger implication could be derived from their assumptions and tested by the same data, but that the available data do not support either implication strongly, nor are they suitable for testing them.

The article presents a list of books, journals and reports published by the American Economic Association. Some of these publications include Co-operation in a Western City by Albert Shaw, Co-operation in New England by K.W. Bemis, Relation of the State to Industrial Action by H.C. Adams, Statistics in College by C.D. Wright, Sociology and Political Economy by F.H. Giddings, The Legal-Tender Decisions by E.J. James, Capital and Its Earnings by John B. Clark, The Manual Laboring Class by F.A. Walker, Mine Labor in the Hocking Valley by E.W. Bemis and Statistics and Economics by Richmond Mayo-Smith. The article also highlights that during 1896-1899 the association issued its publications in two series, the bimonthly Economic Studies and the new series of larger monographs printed at irregular intervals. In 1900 it reverted to the policy of issuing its monographs, called the third series of the publications, at quarterly intervals. The article also focuses on various topics of The American Economic Review published in different months by the association.

The article presents authors' comments on three different papers on industrial cost analysis by economists Lester G. Telser, Richard H. Holton, Frederick V. Waugh and Kenneth E. Ogren. The article says that Telser's paper is provocative, and his proposition that an inverse relationship exists between the intensity with which a firm advertises and the price elasticity of its product seems to accord with empirical observation. In addition to one's own illustrations, one may note that aggregate advertising tends to increase during periods of rising personal incomes, and vice versa. At the same time there are reasons for believing that price elasticities tend generally to decrease during such periods, and vice versa. It appears, therefore, that consumer advertising in the aggregate also conforms to Telser's thesis. The article adds that the paper by Waugh and Ogren and the paper by Holton are of an entirely different nature. Both papers utilize a static, equilibrium type of conceptual framework that derived historically from the classical theory of the stationary state. Within such a framework, analysis necessarily is made in terms of demand-supply relationships, with demand originating in the preferences and purchasing power of consumers and supply originating in production costs. In it, both demand and supply are regarded as given, and frictions tend to be regarded as interferences with pure competition.

The article presents discussions by economists on some papers that are published in the May 1, 1953 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that all papers in their concluding analysis focus upon long-term changes in economic life. This is reflected in their growing preoccupation with economic development. But beyond this new interest is the recent impact of sociology upon economics. Sociological theory, whether that stated in terms of values or the less subjectively oriented concepts of social organization and process, derives from broader cross-cultural comparisons. Economists have been forced to acknowledge that much of their analytical framework is of specific rather than generalized applicability and as a result they are virtually compelled to view problems of economic development and change as intertwined with other aspects of a social system. Economist Joseph J. Spengler relates sociological value theory to economics with his usual sound and broad perspective. The author disagrees with Spengler's main conclusions.