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The author comments on articles by economists Gramlich, Sargent and Wallace concerning the comparative strengths of monetary and fiscal policies. He states that problems encountered in connection with reduced form equations will not be solved automatically with the use of a complete model as there are theoretical and statistical problems that need to be solved before a proper formulation of the relative strengths of two stabilization policies can be done. He mentions that it is meaningless to decide on the basis of statistical fit the correct or incorrect macroeconomic process as both views may in fact be right.

Professor Littleton's paper seems especially timely in view of the present day ideas accounting as a record of original prices and widely fluctuating prices as a normal pattern-there seems to have come the conviction that accounting for outlay cost can no longer be considered a dependable guide to those who look to accounts for essential information. And the conclusion then follows that account keeping or financial statement practice must be modified to suit the new background. The assumption that problems of income distribution dividends, income tax, speculative security profits are of more importance than problems of the measurement of the income generated by the creation of new wealth or the rendering of acceptable services. The assumption that accounting has a more important obligation to supply data useful in managerial pricing policy than it has in facilitating the comparison of past input of services costs with past output of services revenues. The assumption that accounts and statements are merely tabulations of statistical data related to social income and as such are open to any desired manipulations by statistical methodology, such as weighting by index numbers, reduction to averages, elimination of seasonal variations, etc.

The article reports on consumer credit and discusses the paper, "Evaluative Techniques in Consumer Finance - Experimental Results and Policy Implications for Financial Institutions" by Vincent P. Apilado, Don C. Warner, and Joel J. Dauten. Apilado and his colleagues attempt to develop methods to attain optimal credit acceptance policies before giving credit to consumers. A sample of 475 good and bad loans was examined to show character and capacity with collateral set up as a separate area. The most important factor found relating to bankruptcies is the ratio of personal assets to personal debt.

This article discusses the effect on income of Phase II of the wage-price control program of the United States. Several discussants commented on the issue of income shares under the Phase II program. R. A. Gordon, William Branson, and others noted that, with productivity growing exceptionally fast because of the rapid cyclical expansion expected in the economy, profit margins would widen so much that some cost absorption by business would still permit the profit share to expand. Arthur Okun noted that Perry's neutrality was defined as the state of income shares that would prevail in the absence of the program and that the cyclical expansion of profit margins that we are experiencing would have occurred anyhow. Gardner Ackley argued that we did not know enough about what has happened to price-cost relations in recent years to take any strong position about what income shares should be. Therefore Perry's neutrality concept should not override the need to slow inflation, and some cost absorption was appropriate as a way to help accomplish this. James Duesenberry and Michael Posner felt that the most serious practical problem was not the question of existing income shares but rather delivering on the promise to slow prices noticeably. The trade unions are reluctant to accept wage controls because they have little faith that the inflation will slow down. Differing views were expressed on the use of profit margin ceilings in Phase II. Alan Greenspan pointed out that the application of the rules on the basis of the margins of individual firms would hold down overall prices and margins more than people thought.

The Klein-Jonhson paper inspires the sort of reaction that an environmentalist might experience in yet seeing another prototype of an emission-free automobile without any real assurance that such a thing might actually run on the highway any time soon. As an admirer of the idea of the Link project, my remarks are tinged with that kind of impatience because it seems to me that Link does not as yet give results that allow a tracing of the effects of changes in economic activity from country to country with sufficient authority so that policy advice could be based on the results. In this respect, I am wondering to what extent the current paper represents a further step in the evolution of the Link project towards a policy advice goal and, indeed, in how far it still is more an academic rather than a practical exercise. It may well be that a fair amount of the problems associated with the Link models lies in the fact that all the national models are essentially demand models. The absence of supply variables, thus, makes it very hard to evaluate, for example, the way in which inflationary pressures of the sort we had in 1973 are transmitted from one country to another. But even abstracting from this general problem, there are some more specific questions that seem puzzling about the results presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of papers presented to the 1963 Conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth. The conference was held during June 23-28, 1963. There were five sessions, which covered topics like national incomes, growth rates, economic growth, etc. Some of the papers were "Rates of Growth in Israel's Economy," by A.L. Gaathon; "A Statistical Evaluation of the Rate of Growth of National Income in Postwar Japan," by M. Shinohara; "Reliability and Usefulness of Short-Term National Accounts: Australia," by Don Youngman; and "New Evidence on Demand Elasticities," by H.S. Houthakker.

The literature of index numbers contains much discussion of the relative merits of geometric and arithmetic averages of prices and quantities. The controversy on this subject dates from the middle of the nineteenth century and is fully described by Crowe [2]. In recent times both types of averages have been applied to security price relatives to measure the performance of groups of securities over time. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the properties of these security indexes and to show the relationships between them and an index based upon a more general type of average called the power mean. The concluding section of this paper contains the proof of an interesting and important limit property which provides the conceptual link between geometric and arithmetic security indexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a comment on the article "The Strange Journey of Monetary Indicators." The author discusses the role that monetary policy plays as well as the role of policy makers. The author believes that if one follows the logic set forth in the paper someone might draw the conclusion that policy makers serve a limited purpose and that economic indicators, if closely watched, provide all the necessary information to understand how an economy is functioning. The author defends the role that policy makers play and notes that they have a significant impact in terms of promoting measures aimed at economic stabilization.

The article reports on economic indicators for future stock prices and discusses the paper, "The Predictive Content of Some Leading Economic Indicators for Future Stock Prices" by Bryan Heathcotte and Vincent P. Apilado. Heathcotte and Apilado found, through empirical research, that there isn't a single economic indicator that can consistently be relied upon for stock price forecasting so a combination of quality indicators is needed to enable a cumulative look at market behavior. They used the "1966 Short List" of leading indicators of business cycles published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in their study.

The article discusses problems associated with economic growth at maximal rate. The main purpose of the present article is expository. Drawing where needed on the studies cited, the authors utilize a diagrammatic device that makes it possible to exhibit, in terms of a two-commodity world, the essentials of the model by economist John von Neumann and its maximal growth properties. It is reported that in 1936 von Neumann presented orally, for subsequent publication in an Austrian mathematical periodical little known to economists, a paper that has greatly influenced economic theory up to the present time, and of which all the ramifications have perhaps not yet become fully apparent. Paradoxically, von Neumann's paper shows that for a piece of work to spark several new developments in economic theory, it is not necessary that it have any particular claim to realism in its portrayal of economic life. Subsequent developments have fully vindicated the intuitions that led von Neumann to make these drastic and arbitrary-looking simplifications.

A conference paper about the quantity theory of money, industrial prices, and interest rates, which can be determined through liquidity, is presented. This theory promotes the idea that prices are linked to money supply that has been derived from real income. Several charts are included in the article that show the relationship between money supply and debt, average prices and bond yields, and the gross private product (GPP) of primary debt and assets.

A conference paper about the history of marketing in Latin America is presented. The author gives a brief account of race and nationality distribution in the region, followed by the effects of the World War I on the area. According to the author, Latin America faces difficulties in industrializing due to its inability to import the necessary machinery.

A conference paper pertaining to the measurement of economic and marketing efficiency is presented. According to the author, economic efficiency is the proportion of output of income to the input of factors of production. The author lists a number of factors that influence efficiency, including specialization, use of capital and business organization.

Presents comments on an article about the relationship between interest rates and inflation. Discussion of the paper and its contents; Criticism.

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

The article presents some abstracts of published materials concerning money, credit and banking and monetary policy. The paper entitled "The Role of Monetary Policy," by M. Friedman presents a professional opinion on the role of monetary policy which has fluctuated widely from great confidence in the potency of monetary policy in the 1920s to widespread belief that monetary policy is of negligible importance, to a revival of belief in the potency of monetary policy. The abstract entitled "Competition and Efficiency in the Banking System: Empirical Research and Its Policy Implications," by S.I. Greenbaum discusses recent bank cost studies with a view toward assessing their potential importance as well as their achievements. The paper concludes with a discussion of selected topics of banking structure research outside the area of cost analysis. The paper entitled "Risk Aversion, Financial Intermediation, and the Term Structure of Interest Rates," by H.I. Grossman investigates theoretically the determination of the equilibrium difference between expected holding period yields on government debts of different maturities.

This section presents abstracts of studies on economics which were published in the July- September 1964 issue of The Indian Economic Journal. The paper titled Economic Development, Terms of Trade and Tax Policy, by Gianni G. Zandano, deals with the effects of economic expansion on the terms of trade with particular reference to underdeveloped countries. The paper titled Monetary and Credit Policy in the Framework of an Economic Plan with Special Reference to the Short-Term Aspects, by S. L. N. Simha, looks at the economic and financial situation prevailing in Latin America. The paper titled Behaviourism and the Theory of the Firm, S. B. Prasad, shows that variations in the theory of economic organization center primarily around the so-called principle of profit maximization.

This article introduces several articles published in the September 1974 issue of the periodical "Brookings Papers on Economic Activity." The four principal articles and the report appearing in this issue were presented at the fifteenth conference of the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity held in Washington on December 5-6, 1974. One of the papers deals with the role of the dollar in the world economy, one with the fundamental nature of the labor market in the United States, and three with different aspects of the economy's cyclical performance: the viability of thrift institutions during periods of tight money, the cyclical behavior of productivity in manufacturing, and the impact of recession on different groups in the labor market. In the first article of this issue, Marina Whitman examines the past, present, and future roles of the U.S. dollar in the world monetary system. Under the Bretton Woods system that operated for a generation prior to 1971, the dollar was different from all other currencies in several respects. First, it served as the major world "vehicle" currency and was used by private parties abroad even in many international transactions that involved no American resident. Second, it was linked to gold by the U.S. obligation to buy and sell gold for monetary purposes at a fixed price. In contrast, other countries maintained the par value of their currencies by buying and selling foreign exchange, generally using dollars for those transactions (or "interventions"). Thus, the dollar was the intervention currency. Furthermore, it was the yardstick by which the International Monetary Fund defined the value of other currencies. It was also the major reserve currency; most of the growth of official international reserves came from the acquisition of dollars by central banks.

In this paper the authors present an interpretive discussion of the scope for management scientists to make a more effective contribution to improving the performance of the Canadian economy, by active involvement in management and decision making in Canadian institutions, both private and public. Initially the paper surveys the evidence on the differences in economic performance between Canada and the United States, outlining the methods used, and the results. Some factors turn out to be relatively unimportant in the differences, while others are quite crucial. In the broad area of manufacturing, the gap in economic performance is particularly wide. Tariffs in Canada and other countries have become important contributions to the existing product diversity, short production runs, high cost and low productivity in relation to performance in other countries. A further important area is the pattern of decision making in Canada which has led to a survival strategy and resistance to change rather than innovation, creativity and risk taking. This tends to perpetuate the lower levels of productivity found to exist. In the light of this analysis of economic factors and decision making, the paper makes some broad recommendations on the role of management scientists, the need for change in management style, and changes in tariffs that would accelerate change and would recognize the importance of interdependence for more efficient performance. The paper concludes on the theme "The Time is Now!". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent study of the loss reserving practices of nonlife insurance companies indicated a fairly consistent tendency toward over-reserving. This paper reports the results of a study of the economic incentives for and financial implications of this practice. The study was made using a computer model to explore the effects of different levels of over-reserving given various company growth rates and mixes of insurance policies sold. The results indicate that while there may be some direct economic gain derived from the practice, especially where high loss reserve lines and/or high growth rates predominate, reported underwriting gain and thus policyholder's surplus levels may be significantly reduced. The paper concludes by pointing out the possible implications of over-reserving for the policies of insurance firms, regulatory agencies and the Internal Revenue Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents comments and discussion on an article by Saul Hymans on composite leading indicators. Discussion of various parts of the paper; Criticism.

The article presents the comments of several economists concerning the analysis of Arthur Okun and Nancy Teeters on the problems associated with the full employment surplus in the U.S. Warren Smith stresses that he has been skeptical about the usefulness of the full employment surplus. He states that the function of the surplus calculation is to provide a summary number that will offer a prime estimate of the impact of the budget on the economy. He claims that this concept is not applied in Okun and Teeters report. Meanwhile, R. A. Gordon denotes that he has a few difficulties and many agreements with the paper. On the part of weighting system, he agrees on the concept to adjust expenditures, transfer payments and taxes. Moreover, discussion of Okun regarding the comments is also given.

This article presents repose of the authors on comments made by scholar Henry H. Villard on the paper "Investment Criteria, Productivity, and Economic Development" that was published in the August 1955 issue of the periodical "The Quarterly Journal of Economics." Villard raises issues, which the authors agree are important, and must be taken into account in any realistic discussion of economic development. The paper makes clear, the awareness of the fact that population must be regarded as a variable, rather than a constant, in development plans. One of the authors had already devoted a considerable amount of attention to the theoretical side of this question. But it is difficult to understand Villard's feeling of practical certainty about the productiveness of direct investment in factories making birth control devices, in the agricultural setting. No evidence is presented to support this assertion. Since he speaks only of devices, he evidently does not include the cost, both private and social, of achieving the revolution in mores, mental attitudes, and social and moral values, conducive to the acceptance of birth control. This is a delicate and perhaps explosive issue. A reading of the contributions of demographers and other experts who have been close students of this problem does not leave one with a feeling of practical certainty on this point.

There have been proposed in the literature several alternative indexes of the degree of residential segregation of the nonwhite population of a city. This paper shows that all of these can be regarded as functions of a single geometrical construct, the segregation curve. From this several important implications have been developed. First, the proposed indexes of segregation have a number of hitherto unnoticed inter-relationships which can be mathematically demonstrated. Second, some of them have mathematical properties of which their proponents were unaware, and which lead to difficulties of interpretation. Third, as a consequence, the status of the empirical work already done with segregation indexes is questionable, and their validity for further research is undetermined. This paper consists of a summary of the mathematical analysis made of segregation indexes and of a documentation of the conclusions listed. The problem of validating segregation indexes is viewed as one of some importance, not only in its own right, but also as an illustration of the difficulties in finding an adequate rationale for much sociological research using index numbers.

The bond portfolio problem is viewed as a multistage decision problem in which buy, sell, and hold decisions are made at successive (discrete) points in time. Normative models of this decision problem tend to become very large, particularly when its dynamic structure and the uncertainty of future interest rates and cash flows are incorporated in the model. In this paper we present a multiple period bond portfolio model and suggest a new approach for efficiently solving problems which are large enough to make use of as much information as portfolio managers can reasonably provide. The procedure utilizes the decomposition algorithm of mathematical programming and an efficient technique developed for solving subproblems of the overall portfolio model. The key to the procedure is the definition of subproblems which are easily solved via a simple recursive relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the abstracts of several papers on economics published in the September 1965 issue of the journal "Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv." The first paper of the journal is "The Vicious Circle of Poverty," by P.T. Bauer. This paper is a criticism of the thesis of the vicious circle of poverty and stagnation, which is a major generalisation of the literature on underdeveloped countries. The thesis states in effect that poverty itself sets up well-nigh insurmountable obstacles to its own conquest. The second paper of the journal is "Planning for Resources and Planning for Strategy Change," by Gustav Ranis. The third paper of the journal is "The Goals and Criteria of Comprehensive Development Planning," by Bruno Knall. It is the basic assumption of this paper that comprehensive development planning realistically conceived is essential for the economic and social progress in developing countries. The fourth paper of the journal is "Dualism As a Problem of Economic Development," by Reimut Jochimsen.

This section presents abstracts of studies on economics which were published in the August 1964 issue of Economia Internazionale. The paper titled A Note on the Definition of International Liquidity, by Benjamin J. Cohen, defines international liquidity as a synonym for global reserve-adequacy and a framework of analysis is developed for judging solutions to the alleged problem of international liquidity. The paper titled Forced Saving in Underdeveloped Countries: A Rediscovery or a Misapplication of a Concept, by Markos J. Mamalakis, discusses the distinction between forced and voluntary saving. The paper titled Long-Term Growth of A Developing Economy, by A. Qayum, looks at aggregative models of economic growth that have been recently constructed for developed economies.

For years economists have emphasized the importance of expectations in a variety of problems. The extent of agreement on the significance of expectations is almost matched, however, by the paucity of data that can be considered even reasonable proxies for these forecasts. One area in which expectations are highly important is the valuation of the common stock of a corporation. The price of a share is--or should be--determined primarily by investors' current expectations about the future values of variables that measure the relevant aspects of corporations' performance and profitability, particularly the anticipated growth rate of earnings per share. This theoretical emphasis is matched by efforts in the financial community where security analysts spend considerable effort in forecasting the future earnings of companies they study. These forecasts are of particular interest because one can observe divergence of opinion among different individuals dealing with the same quantities. This paper is devoted to the analysis of a small sample of such predictions and certain related variables obtained from financial houses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the subject of credit regulation and consumer buying. The author questions some of the assumptions implicit in arguments supporting the installment credit control as an anti-inflationary measure. The author also wants to call attention to some of the social and economic costs resulting from direct byproducts of the impact of installment credit control, which should be considered along with the direct impact of such control. The author presents the assumption that consumer credit adds to the volume of consumer purchasing power.

The article discusses advertising in relation to the business cycle. The author notes his intention to examine the relationships between the advertising expenditures, sales and profits of companies. According to the author, the periodical "Printers' Ink," an index of advertising, is an effective measure of fluctuations in newspaper, farm paper, magazine and radio advertising. The author discusses seasonal variations in advertising, attributing changes to an increase in federal corporation taxes.

Although interest in input/output analysis was expressed as early as 1951, apparently few companies are using this technique. Typical marketing problems related to identification of users, estimates of users' needs, and determination of users' relative growth rates should lend themselves well to input/output technique. An example of input/output application to a market identification problem for a hypothetical firm is developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on economic forecasting when the subject of the forecast is influenced by the forecast. It has been argued that when forecasts influence economic behavior they may serve as an instrument of control, and that in such instances, the numerical accuracy of forecasts loses its relevance. What is relevant in such instances is the self-reinforcing power of the forecast, that is, the power of the forecast to make the variable in question move in the direction of the forecasted change. But surely all that really matters, from the point of view of control, is the discrepancy between the desired or target value of the forecast variable and its actual or recorded value. A forecast which is successful in terms of the above mentioned discrepancy may be self-nullifying, self-reinforcing, or neither. Whether the forecast is self-reinforcing or sell-nullifying is, in fact, quite irrelevant to the problem of economic control. Economists Emile Grunberg and Franco Modigliani have demonstrated that, if upper and lower bounds are imposed on the forecast variable, an accurate forecast is always possible.

This article presents comments on William Gibson's article about the viability of thrift institutions in the U.S. James L. Pierce: I want to congratulate William Gibson for developing a reasonable structure for the determination of deposit flows into thrift institutions. Nonetheless, I am troubled by a few aspects of the equations underlying his simulations. First, I am puzzled about the interpretation of a double lag process. According to Gibson, stocks adjust with a distributed lag even after people finally perceive changes in interest rates. Second, I am concemed about Gibson's practice of fishing for the right length of lags and choosing different lags for different components for no reason except that they fit better. Finally, the variables for interest rates on thrift deposits present a peculiar problem. Since the innovation of certificates, the average interest rate paid by a thrift institution depends on the mixture of its deposits in the passbook and the certificate forms as well as the maturity of its certificates. One of the more important, if less surprising, substantive findings in Gibson's paper is that raising interest rates is the most costly way for thrift institutions to adjust to the problems created by tight money. That helps explain why the institutions want the govemment to maintain ceilings on interest rates and thus to head off competitive pressures on them to make that costly adjustment.

The analysis of population's impact on the economy has frequently been developed in the context of the dependency rate argument. The dependency rate, typically measured as the proportion of the total population outside the labour force, is a summary statistic which is intended to capture the influence of a population's age structure on the process of economic growth. This paper focuses on only one- and possibly the least understood - of the dependency rate economic influences, the saving rate. Indeed, at certain stages of economic development, the negative saving rate of the elderly could well be greater than the rate for those who have not yet entered the labour force. A debate on the relative merits of the competing models is outside the scope of the present paper. However, it is important to recognize that the interpretation of the economic impact of the dependency rate depends critically on the specific model employed. There are several modifications to the "naive" dependency-rate argument as it pertains to saving which appear critical to an analysis of this demographic statistic as a proxy for economic behaviour.

Table I at the end of this paper attempts to portray the economic sources of the complexity of the West African sub-region by presenting indices of disparity by total population, its density per square kilometre, purchasing power density, and per capita income for fourteen West African countries. Datafor Guinea-Bissau, the fifteenth member of the prospective community, are not yet available. To these indicators of wide economic differentials should be added the different past colonial experiences, the existence of no less than ten mostly inconvertible currency zones, different external links and alliances, a by far higher rate of coups d'état than elsewhere in the world leading to the recurrent problems of political legitimacy, etc.… In spite of all these dysfunctional forces, the West African subregion has indeed had more than a fair share of attempts to form regional economic groupings in the past two decades. The purpose of the second part of this paper is to review in a systematic fashion the rationale behind such groupings. The complexity of the subregion has, of course, contributed to a high rate of failure of integration schemes. We contend that this is also due to the fact that in the West African sub-region, as in all developing countries for that matter, regional integration has been based on the principles of conventional theory of integration. This study would not attempt to develop a new theory, but would attempt in the next part of the paper to present the body of integration dynamics and practice in a new light, so as to highlight the reasons for the high rate of failure, and in the third and final part to recommend some grading principles which could contribute to a faster rate of integration among these economies. This last task will be tackled by developing in a summary fashion a postulational model of systems approach to regional integration in West Africa with particular reference to a new concept of exogenous socio-political... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is the purpose of this paper to review and appraise some conceptual problems in the field of economic base identification, suggest an alternative approach to the problems, and implement a case study. Many different units of measure such as income, payrolls, employment, value added, and sales can be used to quantify economic activity of a community. Employment as a unit of measure is used throughout this study mainly for simplicity and convenience in terms of data available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are three relatively simple methods in common use for determining the rate of interest in installment payment plans. These are known as the Constant Ratio, Series of Payments and Interest at End methods. They have been developed from independent assumption, apparently without any thought that they might be approximations to the more complicated Compound Interest method. In a paper in the American Mathematical Monthly it is shown algebraically that the above methods are approximations to the Compound Interest Method. In order to obtain a better understanding, let us assume temporarily that we know the rate and form a schedule of the payment of the debt. The magnitudes of the rates for the approximate formulas may be compared by means of the areas of the trapezoids. The rate is inversely proportional to the area. The areas for the series of payments, constant ratio, and interest at end methods are in order. This solution is often approximated by means of interpolation in tables. It is the purpose however to compare the compound interest method with the above methods and to present a simple but more accurate approximate formula which can be used without knowledge of the theory of finance.

This article provides information on various papers and studies on the economic history. The annual selective critical survey of literature on the history of the Low Countries has been continued by the editors of the "Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Kederlanden," while E. Kossmann and J. Kossmann wrote a "Bulletin critique de l'historiographie neerlandaise en 1962 et 1963" in the periodical "Revue du Nord" and J. Dhondt and his team a "Bulletin d'histoire de Belgique" over the same years. The latter also edited a list of a thousand books and papers on Belgian history, published in 1962, in the periodical "Revue Beige de Philologie et d'Histoire." B.H. Slicher van Bath's paper "Report on the study of Historical Demography in the Netherlands" surveys research in progress and the sources available, and gives a useful general outline of the probable evolution of population conditions and of particular factors of mortality such as epidemics and floods. The first bibliography of old weights and measures in the Low Countries has been drawn up by the same author, "Alfabetische lijst van boeken en tijdschriftartikelen van belang voor de kennis van de oude Nederlandse en Belgische maten en gewichten."

This article presents information on several papers and studies, which deal with the economic history of Great Britain. Two studies of general interest concern secular trends in the late medieval economy. The concept of the thirteenth century as a period of boom forms the target for a lively onslaught by E. Miller, "The English Economy in the Thirteenth Century: Implications of Recent Research" in the periodical "Past and Present." For all the signs of expansion, he argues, thirteenth-century England did not enjoy a growth economy in the technical sense. People increased more rapidly than the capacity to produce, and society faced a progressive crisis, in which average production per head was falling. Yet this does not permit us to go to the opposite extreme and make the period after 1350 an epoch of economic growth. Another paper discussed is "Monetary Movements and Market Structure: Forces for contraction in Fourteenth-and Fifteenth-Century England" by H.A. Miskimin that was published in a previous issue of the periodical "Journal of Economic History." In a discussion in fact confined to the fourteenth century, Miskimin attempts to reconcile the demographic and monetary theories of recession. Population changes caused a secular shift in demand, altering market structure and prices.

Presents a paper that focuses on the link between monetary policy and changes in real economic activity. Assertion that ambitious goals for achieving short-run stabilization with monetary policy cannot be met; Comparison of different methods of making the compromise between aggregates and interest rates; Analysis of the current economic status in the United States in 1973.

Presents a paper that examines the reasons given for the devaluation of the dollar in foreign markets and the belief that the dollar was already undervalued before its decline. Possible causes for the dollar's decline; Conclusion that although some shifting out of dollars in inevitable, the size of the shifts still hangs in the balance, and will depend heavily on unfolding events, including policy decisions by the United States authorities.