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The minimum cost multicommodity circulation problem with convex arc-costs is solved by using the negative directed cycles approach. This algorithm is used to compute equilibrium flows in a transportation network with elastic demands and congestion effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Commodity Agreements have been demonstrated time and again to be ineffectual as a means of exploiting a private or government monopoly position; they have, however, been demonstrated to retard economic development and increase income inequality within the Less Developed Nations where they must exclude potential new producers and prevent the most efficient use of scarce resources. The continued popularity of ICA's can only be explained by identifying the various parties to such agreements -- the administrators in the consumers' and producers' nations, the employees of the international agencies involved, and the producer and consumer groups -- and observing their behavior in the light of specified utility functions and constraints. It is only by reference to the pattern of rewards and incentives that we may understand why some institutions with great capacity to generate economic development fail to do so, while other less perfect institutions permit rapid growth. ROBERT E. KUENNE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the trade and other forms of exchange among prehistoric peoples as an enduring and indeed traditional topic in archeology. This topic has been recently realized as an object of extremely innovative and exciting research. Its historical value lies in the artifactual and stylistic exotics used for cross-dating and relative chronology as well as in the presumed social mechanism in diffusion or in the stimulation of tribal societies by more advanced groups. However, the incidence of exchange and the nature of the various institutions through which it may have taken place are becoming much less matters of indirect interpretation because these determinations of raw material sources, identification of routes of movements, and other reasons have surpassed these.

Presents a research work on weed ecology which attempts to assess the range of weed variations in fields used for commercial vegetable production. Description of methods used in the study; Statistics of several weed seeds recorded during the study; Discussion on the results of the study and the role of soil properties on the occurrence of weeds.

El artículo examina los problemas de política económica en los países productores de materias primas. Las fluctuaciones en los precios han sido objeto de muchos estudios sobre este fenómeno. Se menciona un estudio realizado por la revista suiza "Kyklos" que investiga los cambios en los volúmenes de exportación. En el estudio, se consideró varios factores como carácter nacional y los fondos de estabilización.

Se presentan resúmenes de varios artículos publicados en revistas económicas. Entre los artículos incluidos están "Commodities Face a Test" por Francis Cassell, "Land Utilization and Agriculture in an Indian Village" por Pradyumna P. Karan y "Long and Medium Term Industrial Credit in Italy" por Alfred Roux.

This note demonstrates a simple solution method for the following single- commodity flow problem: Given a set of origins each with a known supply, and a set of destinations each with a known demand, find the minimum possible capacity for a vehicle which is to perform all the origin-to-destination transfers one at a time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a estimate of the quantitative impact of the foreign born labor force on the U.S. commodity production over 1869-1929. In order to demonstrate the importance of immigration, the author has constructed estimates of per capita commodity output in the absence of foreign born labor. A broader measure could be defined to include the output produced by foreign born laborers and their children. This more broadly defined measure would give a greater weight to the quantitative impact of immigration and would extend this impact later into the twentieth century. The measure used in this paper, foreign born labor, indicates the economy's dependence on an exogenous labor force, most of whose basic rearing costs have been met before entering the United States. Estimates are made of employment in the commodity producing sectors of agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and construction for the total labor force and for foreign born labor. A commodity output series is estimated, by sector, for 1869-1929. Average labor productivity for each commodity producing sector is constructed for the total labor force. The product of average labor productivity of the total labor force and immigrant employment, by sector, is taken to yield estimates of commodity output produced by the foreign born labor force.

The Law of the Sea may be defined as the specialized set of decisions dealing with the nature and extent of control exercised over the marine environment. Of particular concern to geographers are three aspects: the distribution of controls which are exercised in the marine environment, the bases for establishing certain controls, and the impact the controls have on the utilization of the sea's resources. The marine environment differs from that on land because of its three-dimensional nature, the mobility of many of its resources, and the fact that various forms of activity can be carried on simultaneously in one small sector of the sea. The resources of the high seas are the common property of all countries, although coastal states exercise jurisdiction over narrow bands of water adjacent to their shorelines. Over the years a complex body of international law has grown up concerning jurisdiction over the world ocean; much of this law is embodied in the four Geneva Conventions adopted in 1958. But with changing technologies and changing political and economic conditions, the Conventions have proven to be of limited value in resolving international conflicts over access to the sea's resources. Individual countries continue to press unilateral claims for which there are no bases in law or custom, yet against which there is little attractive counter force. At a time when the potential wealth of the marine environment is slowly being unlocked, it is essential to develop a composite view of the world ocean and its administration, to relate the controls exercised in the sea to the milieu in which they are operative, to compare maritime controls in one area with those in effect in other areas, and to move from national and multinational interests in marine resource management toward the identification of world interests in the rational control and management of the marine environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study a model is developed and tested to describe the selection of major grocery purchase towns by a dispersed population. The information used was from a questionnaire taken to the approximately 600 households which comprised an areally stratified random sample of the Iowa dispersed population in 1960. The model uses the concept, developed in the work, of an indifference surface of town attractiveness indices to predict consumer town selection. The test of the model leads to the conclusion that consumer spatial expenditure patterns for grocery purchases can be better predicted by this model than the alternate assumptions of central place theory, and that the search routine employed in the model is a more suitable basis for explaining these spatial patterns than the multiple regression techniques which have recently been in vogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo examina varias propuestas para el financiamiento de fluctuaciones en el comercio de productos básicos. Varios comités de las Naciones Unidas han realizado un estudio que investiga el problema de la inestabilidad de precios en los mercados de materias primas. Un grupo de expertos que trabajaron en 1949 y en 1951 determinaron la necesidad de una intervención por parte del Fondo Monetario Internacional.

El artículo discute el problema de la estabilidad en cuanto a los productos de exportación en América Latina. La creación de la Alianza para el Progreso, formulado por el Presidente John F. Kennedy, ha abierto puertas de oportunidad para la región. Se menciona el trabajo del Grupo de Expertos, quien tuvo el cargo de analizar los problemas de los precios y el aumento incompleto de los productos básicos que exporta América Latina.

Se presentan noticias que tratan de la economía latinoamericana. Se informa que el Tratado de Montevideo fue ratificado por seis países. Argentina y Brasil anunciaron una política conjunta de apoyo a la Asociación Latinoamericana de Libre Comercio. Se declaró oficialmente en Cuba que se había implantado un sistema económico socialista. Brasil sugirió un sistema de compensación a beneficio de los países exportadores de materias primas.

Se presentan noticias que tratan de la economía latinoamericana. Brasil preparaba una lista de mercancías para la Zona Latinoamericana de Libre Comercio. Los Congresos de Chile y México estudiaban la ratificación del Tratado de Montevideo. Colombia había decidido ingresar en la Zona de Libre Comercio. Cuba se retiró del Banco Internacional de Reconstrucción y Fomento. Los Estados Unidos había prohibido las exportaciones a Cuba.

This article attempts to explore whether the fair-trade laws will provide the desired protection in the U.S. Because most business institutions are organized along trade or product lines, and groups of them perform highly similar functions, similar problems tend to arise. Many of these are related to pricing and have given rise to group demands for legislative price-protection. It is sometimes said that the American people are living in a "there-ought-to-be-a-law" era. The logic underlying the enactment of legislation permitting manufacturers of branded goods to specify designated or minimum resale prices for their products has been a controversial subject. In view of the fact that forty- five states passed "fair-trade" laws within a remarkably short time and largely have retained them, some of the conditions under which these laws operate may well be examined. The present laws of this type were a product of the depression of the mid-thirties, when governmental aid for economic problems of all kinds appeared to be the easy solution.

The article focuses on some opinions on economic tendencies. Washington officials have been chiefly responsible for the confusion and delay in the disposal of surplus property of war goods. They have sought continuously to dispose of this property by long distance operations and controls from the central office and have relegated the regional office to the position of rubber stamping clerks. If Washington would bond the regional office employees and delegate to them ample authority to dispose of the property, much greater results would be produced. It is extremely important that this surplus property be sold immediately for three reasons. Surplus goods in the hands of the public will help substantially to alleviate the shortage of consumer goods; the proceeds from sales will help to balance the Federal budget; and, lastly, the proceeds from sales, that is, collections from the public, will mop up excess and inflationary spending power of the public, and in this way prove effective in helping prevent run!away inflation of prices.

This article focuses on the relationship between states and municipalities. One of the least known relationships between states and municipalities is the arrangement existing in some states today whereby municipalities may buy through the state purchasing agency. So little is known of this plan that few individuals seem able either to enumerate the states which profess the arrangement or to suggest the extent to which it is used. In general it seems that centralized purchasing may be justified on the grounds that it results in lower prices and in higher quality of merchandise. The volume of purchase created by two units buying together may very well cause some reduction in price. Four units purchasing together may get even better prices, but four small units will not get reductions as great as those of a single large unit. The nature of the commodity, the policy of the vendor, and the inherent laws of economics dictate the limits to which increased volume results in price reductions. A monopoly-controlled product will not be subject to the same reductions as a highly competitive commodity.

The article presents some of the needed information on the relationships of the Central Business District, CBD, retail sales mix and Standard Metropolitan Area population, SMA. First the ten retail groups are evaluated in relation to SMA population for 1958; four groups, general merchandise, apparel, furniture and eating-drinking, are then selected as the significant groups. The data source for studying the dvnamics of the retail mix is the series of CBD bulletins prepared by the United States Census of Business for the years 1948, 1954 and 1958.

This article focuses on requirements of the geographers of the international trade statistics. In the post-World War II period the United Nations Statistical Office commenced the publication of three major series of international trade statistics. Geographers have found these useful, for together they constitute the most comprehensive source of information on economic connections among countries and on the functional economic organization of the world. The three statistical series reviewed here are the Yearbook of International Trade Statistics, Direction of International Trade, and Commodity, Trade Statistics, all published by the United Nations Statistical Office.

This article focuses on cultivation of tea in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, most of the tea farms are concentrated in the humid subtropical lands of the Georgian Republic. State and collective tea farms are also found in the Krasnodar Krai and the Azerbaidzhan Republic. In 1893, commercial tea cultivation first appeared in Tsarist Russia when the Popoff tea firm established a plantation near the Georgian town of Batumi. By 1913, several plantations with a total acreage of 2,235 acres were producing tea leaves for the national market. The present level of per capita consumption of tea during the years of Soviet rule has been much lower than the 1913 per capita level.

Recent developments in aircraft technology will create greater airlift capabilities at lower costs. How will this increased capability be effectively utilized by the Department of Defense? Time-series extrapolations of air-cargo demand have been made in the past for the civil sector of our economy and similar projections have been proposed for military airlift planning. These proved less than successful when compared with actual tonnages generated. This paper will explore a different methodology for predicting airlift demand in the military establishment. Basic data, consisting of approximately 3.8 million commodities and millions of shipments recorded on magnetic automatic data processing tapes, are obtained from all DOD supply management activities. Two information files are established. One is a catalogue file reflecting the physical characteristics (weight, cube, price, etc.) of the commodities that influence total distribution costs of delivering the items to overseas destinations. The second is a demandfile containing the actual volume and traffic flow of the commodities. From these files, total distribution costs for air and surface movement are computed by a mathematical model for each commodity to determine the break-even air rate. The economically air-eligible commodities are then correlated with the volume and traffic flow to determine the elasticity of demand at various air ton-mile rates. Based on known operating costs of new aircraft, logical requirements for airlift can be established. At the same time, criteria for selecting air-eligible commodities are based on economic considerations, thus producing the least-cost method of supplying overseas activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiments revealed wide differences in efficiency among workers engaged in inspecting articles for appearance, the worst workers making two-and-a-half times as many errors as the best. A group of tests successfully divided the workers into a more and a less efficient group. Elimination of certain unnecessary movements in sorting, and the construction of a new sorting station at which the men could sit or stand at will, reduced the number of faulty articles passed by more than half. The effect of fatigue and boredom appears to be to lower the standard of inspection: the number of mistakes made remains approximately constant, but they include a larger proportion of faulty articles passed, and a smaller proportion of good articles rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author—a member of the Institute's staff—points out the many sources of error involved in the expression in statistical form of customers' statements of preference. The collection of data should in any case be regarded only as the first step in market research. Its most important function is the interpretation of these data and the design and trying-out of new products—for both of which a training in psychology is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]