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This article presents abstracts of articles on economics published in the January-March 1965 issue of The Indian Economic Journal. In the paper An Activity Analysis Approach to Measure Productive Efficiency in Agriculture: A Case Study of Ahmednagar and Nasik Districts, by K. R. Bharadwaj and R. Bharadwaj, the authors have made an attempt to employ the activity analysis technique to measure productive efficiency of agriculture in India. This technique enables the authors to handle more efficiently multiple inputs without varying the usual index number problems. The approach requires only the more general convexity condition on the production set and the non-positivity of the slope of the isoquant. In the first two sections the methodological issues and the empirical procedure have been discussed. In the final section the results of an empirical enquiry using the farm management data pertaining to the Ahmednagar and Nasik districts have been presented. Furthermore, the article Central Banking in Developing Countries: Some Lessons of Australian Experience, by H. W. Arndt considers each of the major central banking functions such as foreign exchange policy, control of money supply, selective control of credit and development of capital market in order to show how they have come to be exercised by Australia's Central Bank, what problems have arisen and what lessons the Australian experience may hold for central banking in the developing countries. Moreover, the purpose of the paper Production Function for Indian Steel Industry, by A. K. Sarkar is to study the functional relationship of output in the Indian steel industry with that of different inputs. The modified Cobb-Douglas type regression equation has been fitted to the time-series data by the method of least squares in the multiple regression equation with a linear relationship.

This paper is based on a variety of sources of information and describes the biraderi system of kin relations in Pun jab. The system consists of a larger circle of relatives who share a common identity through its name and a more restricted circle determined by competitive gift giving. Functions of this institution are outlined and their implications are traced for a developing country like Pakistan. It is maintained that a fresh approach is needed to resolve the conflicting requirements of the kin groups and the development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious doubts have been raised as to the validity of using cross-sectional estimates of the average propensity to consume over time. These doubts are based on empirical evidence for the United States presented by Kuznets and Goldsmith. This paper extends these considerations to developing countries by looking at the evidence for India. Simple statistical techniques, including ordinary least squares regression. Chow tests, and t-tests, are used in the estimation of the consumption functions and the formulation of hypotheses. Both India and the U.S. are seen to exhibit the same characteristic secular constancy in the average propensity to consume. For India the average propensity to consume is about 0.95 and is maintained in the face of no substantial secular increases in per capita income during the period under study (1919–1960). The same inconsistencies between time series and cross-section evidence on the average propensity to consume are found to exist for India. The permanent income theory suggested only a partial explanation of these inconsistencies and the reconciliation was achieved by a Duesenberry type explanation based on evidence for a shifting cross section consumption function over time. The data was provided by a set of Family Living Surveys for Industrial Workers: 1926, 1933–35, 1950–52, 1958–59. Finally it was noted that the cross-section consumption function in India had shifted both upwards and downwards over the period under study, in contrast to the strict upward shift for the U.S. In an economy such as India's, where secular growth is by no means assured, it is not always likely that consumers can avoid lowering previously achieved consumption standards in the face of cyclical economic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing the amount of family planning in less-developed countries is crucial to their economic development and is basically a marketing job. Much important marketing research has been done in this area; its history is described here. But much more needs to be done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the discussions on science and technology for developing countries at the Twelfth Conference conducted by the International Pugwash Continuing Committee in Udaipar, India. The committee recognized the role of modern science and technology in the transformation of the conditions of human life and the future of mankind. Developed and developing countries were rapidly establishing a wide economic gap, leading to political instability and threat to world peace.

The attempt to superimpose western industrial organization upon less-developed societies has been only partially successful. The cultural values which eased the introduction and development of industrial capitalism in the West are usually quite different in nonwestern societies, and it is now recognized that industrialization in such societies will develop as some sort of a mutation rather than along western lines. The critical variables that affect economic development include family structure, religious systems, governmental forms, the structure of class and power in a given society, educational and shill level of the masses, and so on. In some societies unique barriers to industrialization and economic change exist. The caste system of india, with which the following analysis deals, provides a striking example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on direct private foreign investment (DPFI) in less-developed countries (LDC). DPFI can create problems in LDC, which react in their own self-interest by establishing restrictions on foreign capital policies that Western investors consider unreasonable. The issues are: DPFI providing permanent social benefit to the host country within its national economic development plan; conflict over the right of foreign investors to repatriate profits and investment; and the responsibility for foreign exchange costs. Six benefits of DPFI include creation of jobs, transfer of technical and managerial skills, and growth in the gross national product. An example is given of competition challenging an American company that does business in India.

The article provides information about the cooperative education programs African Education Program and Indian Program. These programs aim to promote science and mathematics teaching in developing countries, and improve educational system which will turn out trained people to create a contemporary industrialized society. They are carried out by groups in the U.S. to provide higher technological training. The curriculums in the African Education Program are handled by the private, nonprofit organization Educational Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts, while the Indian Program is supported by a consortium of the best engineering schools in the U.S.

The article focuses on planning in free enterprise economies. It discusses planning the foreign sector in Latin America. Both planning and aid are relatively new phenomena for Latin America. Difficulties and false starts could have been expected in the early experimental stages. If these early difficulties are to be overcome, planners must establish a proper balance between direct controls, general policies and market forces in guiding resource allocation. The policy instruments are, in most cases, at hand. The need to use them, if nothing else to correct distortions introduced by misguided previous public policies, is clear in second-best Latin American economies. The point can be generalized to other news and indeed, to other developing countries. Latin American planners would do well to note the Indian experience, where sophisticated planning tools have been in use for nearly two decades and where it cannot be said that planning lacked political support. There are so many areas where better planning is an obvious necessity in Latin America, that it is a great waste to attempt detailed regulation of such matters as import demand, where market forces coupled with general public policies could save a good deal of planners' time as well as improve general economic efficiency.

The article focuses on pattern of income distribution in an underdeveloped economy referring to a case study in India. It is generally believed that the pattern of income distribution is more unequal in an underdeveloped economy than in a developed one. Recently researcher Simon Kuznets collected the available evidence with regard to the income distribution pattern in some developed and underdeveloped countries and this evidence seems to support the hypothesis about greater income inequality in the underdeveloped countries than in the developed countries. This evidence also includes estimates on the pattern of distribution in India. Estimates on the income distribution pattern in the underdeveloped countries, however, are not very reliable and estimates about India, in particular, are based on highly inadequate data and involve some questionable assumptions. Recently, more adequate and reliable data and estimates relating to national income, consumers' expenditure, earnings of agricultural and industrial labor, population, saving, and so on, have become available in the case of India; some of these data are not available even for some developed countries. For the purpose of this study, the income-receiving unit is taken to be the household and not the individual.

The article discusses problems of economic growth in the poorer nations that became a major foreign policy concern of the wealthy and powerful nations of the world. The relative progress in the development of the two countries, India and China, is of great significance. There were strong parallels in their preplan structure and strong contrasts between China's totalitarian and India's democratic programs. Their performance relative to one another may influence the programs adopted by other, now less advanced, countries. It will certainly bear upon the United States and Soviet foreign policies. Furthermore, the record of the course of development in these two lands provides a unique opportunity for examining the process of development as such. Structural unemployment, underutilized resources, overurbanization, nonmonetized savings and investment flows-these are illustrative of the types of problems that must be understood and treated if there are to be steady output gains in most of today's underdeveloped areas.

The article discusses the impact of European Common Market in India. It states that Western Europe is the largest trading area in the world and it is also the world's second most important source of external assistance to the underdeveloped countries. The economic growth in Europe will provide the right atmosphere for inducing the industrial countries of Europe to simplify their industrial structure in order to provide for an increasing volume of imports of simpler manufacturers from India. Thus, the import demand of the developed countries will develop less fast compared with the growth of their national income.

This article contains observations made by the author regarding the place of social research and social planning and action in newly developing countries, based upon his experience in India, as of December 1, 1960. In India and other newly independent countries, social research is closely connected to social planning and action. Social research workers a rather small group, frequently self-taught because of a lack of formal training facilities have a sense of urgency, of practicality, of active participation in the amelioration of social ills. This and the lack of opportunity for basic and academic research make the professional life of the research worker in India the very opposite of the professional situation of his colleagues in the U.S. The reason, of course, is that in a country like India nearly all institutions of higher learning and research, and also nearly all decision and action concerning the amelioration or solution of social problems belong to the sphere of government, while in the U.S. a good deal of this belongs to the sphere of private initiative.

The article explores the process of survey research in India with a focus on the field experience in Madras State of India. Many expectations on which social science, particularly the opinion survey, has flourished in the United States do not hold for a country like India is not startling, but this fact warrants careful examination in terms of its consequences for further research. The responses of both sophisticated and unsophisticated Indians to the opinion survey reveal that certain familiar assumptions may not be operative in an underdeveloped country. In choosing the urban sample, authors first made a systematic selection of areas by choosing ten polling stations from the hundreds into which all cities are divided. This is not to deny that individual opinion in the United States is not also often a function of group opinion, of a process which is social, not merely individual. Authors say that in the area of objectives, their experience indicates that some of the questions which the opinion survey can answer in the West can be better answered, at least for the present, by the anthropologist using methods of clinical observation.

The article provides information about the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, India. The institute was founded with the assistance from the Asia Foundation. It undertakes and promotes research in the political and social structure of India and other developing countries. Primarily, it focuses on the historical, social, and cultural conditions under which the process of development takes place in particular countries. All of its research studies and projects are based on the specialized projects in different fields, undertaken by scholars.