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The sustainability issues surrounding conventional agriculture motivate the need for exploring new sustainable methods of farming, critical for global sustainable development. Vertical farming is a potentially underexplored component of sustainable food production portfolio. This paper offers the first quantitative model in the environmental economics and policy literature that evaluates the economic prospect of vertical farming systems in a competitive market setting. Our framework identifies the principal factors to assess the economic and risk aversion potential of vertical farming and utilize a decision model quantify the trade-off between the two alternative farming practices. The model is utilized to evaluate the competitive economic prospect of vertical farming in seven locations with heterogeneous climate and economic conditions within the USA. The results quantify the value proposition of vertical farming in various conditions. Consequently, we leverage these results to evaluate the current and future prospect of the vertical farming industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study has been conducted 330 journal articles contributions with a total of 9527 citations contributed by 763 authors published in volume 78, no. 309 to volume 87, no. 348 of the source Journal, Economica between 2011 to 2020. An analysis of the different forms of literature, subject-wise distribution, ranking of top 24 cited journals, and the application of Bradford's law in Economics literature has been made. Results indicate that major forms of literature are journal 6173 (64.795%), followed by Books 2097 (22.011%) and Working Papers 569 (5.972%). Economica has published an average of 33 articles per volume. The average number of citations appeared at 238.175 citations in each issue. 'American Economic Review', published from the USA, tops the list with a tally of 481 (7.792%) citations, 'Journal of Political Economy' with 399 (6.464%) citations, published from USA and followed by 'Economic Journal' with 335 (5.427%) citations from the UK as the third position. Economics literature is not fit well Bradford's Law. Leimkuhler model is also applied to verify Bradford's law of scattering in the field of Economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an innovative framework for decision making by individuals with inconsistent preferences. Practices, associations of individuals with a preference set shared by its members, provide context and unify preferences across an economy so that decision-makers are situated in social and economic structures. Our framework models the time evolution of certain attributes, emerging from the practice framework, that govern individuals' decisions and their intertemporal variation. A novel feature is that preferences are able to rank other preference sets without the need to aggregate them. Instead, the selection of a preference set is treated as a decision in its own right. Our framework explains decision making paradoxes such as the disposition effect and agency cost considerations that are frequently encountered in the behavioural finance and economics literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent writings on competitiveness fall into three almost disjointed clusters. One is oriented toward firms. A second is concerned with macroeconomic conditions. A third is about national industrial policies. Writings in each of the three perspectives purport to give a virtually complete explanation as to why American companies have been faring so badly recently in international competition. Each of the explanations is plausible, and yet they are completely different. This article aims to describe each of them and to sketch out how they might be joined with each other to arrive at a more integrated perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to examine some of the literature in Economics that concerns itself with the economics of advertising and to present some of the public policy implications of the results of these studies. It is found that it is unlikely that advertising expenditures are subject to increasing returns to scale, thus probably do not lead to an increased concentration of industry for this reason. A study is presented that deals with competition by advertising expenditures and product differentiation in the U.S. cigarette industry. It is found that advertising expenditures, during the 1956-68 period, were not effective in obtaining sales from competitors, although they may have had the affect of inducing new customers to buy the product. The effect of anti-smoking commercials is examined, and it is found that, although they may have had some effect on cigarette smoking, it is doubtful that they provide the impetus for the decreases in advertising expenditures in this particular industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses a controversy among marketing students, some who believe that economic theory encompasses marketing theory, and others who think that there is little application of economic theory to marketing problems. The author of this article refers to neoclassic economic literature, particularly that of Alfred Marshall, to prove that economists are aware of the impact that selling efforts and costs have on economic activity, as well as the relationship between increasing returns and selling costs. The article discusses Marshall's work and his treatment of marketing issues and conditions, concluding that the claim that economists have not considered marketing conditions is false.

Natural disturbances are paramount in the development of ecosystems but may jeopardise the provision of forest ecosystem services. Climate change exacerbates this threat and favours interactions between disturbances. Our objective was thus to capture this dimension of multiple disturbances in forest economics through a literature review. We built a database that encompasses 101 English peer-reviewed articles published between 1916 and 2020. We looked at the relationships between six main natural hazards: fire, windstorm, drought, ice/snow, insects and pathogens/disease. Our results indicate that the most frequent pairs of hazards analysed together are "Wind-Insects" in Europe and "Fire-Insects" in North America. We show that most economic studies assume that natural hazards are independent of each other and could thus miss some of the effects of changing hazard regimes, contrary to ecology-oriented articles. Finally, we suggest creating bridges between the ecology and economics of forest disturbances in order to refine current models of each discipline with the tools provided by the other discipline, especially in the critical context of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of civil wars-and the massive human and economic costs that they impose-has attracted the attention of many scholars, including economists. This article briefly introduces three strands in the economics literature on civil war-causes, consequences and solutions-and identifies potential gaps in the existing literature which may be useful to students who are keen on pursuing further research on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A table of contents is presented for the June 2014 issue of the periodical "Journal of Economic Literature."

: The objective of this paper is to verify the hypotheses presented in the literature on the causal relationship between inflation and its uncertainty, for the newest EU countries. To ensure the robustness of the results, in the study four models for inflation uncertainty are estimated in parallel: ARCH (1), GARCH (1,1), EGARCH (1,1,1) and PARCH (1,1,1). The Granger method is used to test the causality between two variables. The working hypothesis is that groups of countries with a similar political and economic background in 1990 and are likely to be characterized by the same causal relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty. Empirical results partially confirm this hypothesis. Jel Classification: C22, E31, E37. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Esse artigo revisa a recente literatura acadêmica sobre gerenciamento de resultados (GR) no Brasil. O seu objetivo é identificar os principais temas de pesquisa desenvolvidos no contexto do Brasil e os resultados de interesse para usuários, reguladores e preparadores das demonstrações financeiras. Almeja-se que este estudo seja também util a pesquisadores considerando investigar o tema gerenciamento de resultados, na medida em que propicia uma visão abrangente das principais discussões travadas e as metodologias mais usualmente empregadas. Enquanto tema de pesquisa acadêmica, o gerenciamento de resultados revela-se num tópico diversificado e vasto, embora relativamente recente. A maioria dos estudos brasileiros no assunto foi publicada nos últimos dez anos e a produção científica tem se acelerado recentemente, o que torna oportuno uma reflexão sobre o estado da arte, esboçando a evolução do conhecimento e caminhos a serem trilhados no futuro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editor's Note Our policy is to annotate all English-language books on economics and related subjects that are sent to us. A very small number of foreign-language books are called to our attention and annotated by our consulting editors or others. Our staff does not monitor and order books published; therefore, if an annotation of a book does not appear six months after the publication date, please write to us or the publisher concerning the book. An Index of Authors of New Books appearing in the Annotated Listings will appear at the end of the General Index in the December issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents minutes of the April 15, 2011 meeting of the Executive Committee for the American Economic Association held in Chicago, Illinois. Topics discussed include the Report of the Committee on Honors and Awards, Report of the Search Committee for a New Editor of "American Economics Journal: Macroeconomics" and the Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession. It also overviews a report from the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Professions.

There is a veritable menagerie of auctions-single-dimensional, multi-dimensional, single-sided, doublesided, first-price, second-price, English, Dutch, Japanese, sealed-bid-and these have been extensively discussed and analyzed in the economics literature. The main purpose of this article is to survey this literature from a computer science perspective, primarily from the viewpoint of computer scientists who are interested in learning about auction theory, and to provide pointers into the economics literature for those who want a deeper technical understanding. In addition, since auctions are an increasingly important topic in computer science, we also look at work on auctions from the computer science literature. Overall, our aim is to identifying what both these bodies of work these tell us about creating electronic auctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following its opening to trade and foreign investment in the mid-1980s, Mexico's economic growth has been modest at best, particularly in comparison with that of China. Comparing these countries and reviewing the literature, we conclude that the relation between openness and growth is not a simple one. Using standard trade theory, we find that Mexico has gained from trade, and by some measures, more so than China. We sketch out a theory in which developing countries can grow faster than the United States by reforming. As a country becomes richer, this sort of catch-up becomes more difficult. Absent continuing reforms, Chinese growth is likely to slow down sharply, perhaps leaving China at a level less than Mexico's real GDP per working-age person. (JEL E23, E65, F14, O10, O20, O47) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses economist Robert D. Tollison's mindset and work on the economics of religion. It references an article in the publication's 2009 Festschrift for Tollison by Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., and Robert F. Hébert. The authors argue that Ekelund and Hébert are biased and discuss their survey of literature inspired by Tollison. The authors examine the historical use of economic theory in explaining the economics of religion. The institutional behavior of religious markets is also discussed.

The structure of the payments in professional golf tournaments is heavily weighted to reward the top performers more handily. On the PGA TOUR, for example, the winner typically receives 18% of the purse, second place receives 10.8%, and so on down to 0.2% for 70th place. This payment structure brings up the possibility that the PGA TOUR is disproportionately rewarding one-time, exceptional performances rather than consistent steady play. To examine the extent of this effect, this paper correlates the 2002 earnings of the top 100 PGA TOUR professional golfers with their average performances, the variance around the averages, and the skewness of the individual distributions of their scores. Mean performance, variance, and skewness are all significantly related to earnings per tournament in the theoretically predicted directions. The research makes connections to and has implications for several topics in the sports economics literature including competitive balance and the hot-hand phenomenon. Additionally, it uncovers a heretofore unappreciated consequence concerning the relationships among the distributions of effort, performance, and remuneration in the tournaments compensation model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to reexamine the idea currently rampant in the mainstream economics literature that it is relative rather than real income that is of most importance for individual well-being and that both evidence on expressed happiness and individual ‘choices’ in surveys provide strong evidence for that position. Design/methodology/approach - A reconsideration of the theory, extensive new survey results, and presentation of material relevant for individuals' actual choices. Findings - The idea that other's higher incomes leaves others worse off really is not convincing, the evidence from surveys that people really have preferences for living in societies where their relative income is high at the expense of real income is wrong and that people's actual choices reveal them to be interested in real rather than relative income. Practical implications - Those social commentators who deride the negative externalities generated by individual pursuit of higher incomes and who advocate considerably more progressive taxes have still not provided good evidence to make their case. Originality/value - The originality lies in providing an analysis of extensive surveys of positional preferences that allows for the demonstration that responses depend on survey structure and respondent knowledge levels and in shedding new light and doubts on previous attempts to use surveys to attempt to bolster the case that relative income is of overriding importance for individual welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is customary to analyze transport industry structure using two indices: (1) economies of density and (2) economies of scale with variable network size. The latter has been defined to analyze the behavior of costs when output and network size expand simultaneously. After reviewing in detail what is intended with the calculation of RTS under this definition, we show analytically that, when the spatial aspects underlying transport production are taken into account, the seemingly reasonable conditions imposed on the aggregate output descriptions and the network variable conceal implicit output expansions that are not uniquely defined: they happen to depend on the specification of variables and on the evaluation point. Furthermore, most of the multiple output expansions analyzed correspond to cases that are hardly instructive. We conclude that this index is inherently ambiguous, hardly contributes to an adequate analysis of transport industry structure, and should be replaced by the calculation of economies of spatial scope (Journal of Economic Literature L91, L11, D40). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores some of the main bibliographical dimensions of economic literature at a time when there was much interest in economic matters but no discipline of economics. By looking at what was published in the round much economic literature is shown to be short, ephemeral, unacknowledged, polemical, and legislatively orientated. This fluidity is underscored by the uncertaintities about what constituted key works of economic literature and by the failure of attempts to make sense of that literature through dictionaries and histories. Economic literature in the period was, consequently, more unstable and uncertain than has often been acknowledged. It cannot, therefore, be simply characterized as either ‘mercantilist’ or nascent ‘political economy’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Economic theory and data are reviewed in the light of the concept of an economic self. In psychology, the self is in principle held to be a unified entity underlying all decisions, but in practice this unity is undermined by failures of transparency and complications of reflexivity. Current economic theory is found to be deficient in not recognising a self, but economic data confirm that the unity of the self is not absolute. A fuller account of the economic self will require a recognition of the role of human nature and emotions such as pride in forming economic tastes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Rewards for publications in good economics journals are very high, and submission fees and other monetary costs associated with submitting an existing manuscript are low. Consequently, the editorial delay (especially the first-response time—the time until the first editorial decision), by postponing monetary rewards to publication, constitutes the major submission cost (from the author's perspective). Reducing the delay will induce many additional submissions of low-quality papers to good journals, increasing significantly the workload of editors and referees. Moreover, the rejection rate will increase and cause papers to be rejected more times before publication, offsetting at least some of the shorter first-response times. As a result, the efforts of many editors to reduce the editorial delay, although attracting more submissions to their journals, may have adverse effects from a social perspective, and the optimal delay might be longer than the current average of four months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the financial literature, the problem of maximizing the expected utility of the terminal wealth has been investigated extensively (for a survey, see, e.g., Karatzas and Shreve (1998), p. 153, and references therein) by using different approaches.In this paper, we extend the existing literature in two directions. First, we let the utility functionU(.) of the financial agent (who is aprice taker) be implicitly defined throughI(.)=(U'(.))-1, which is assumed to be additively separable, i.e.,I(.)=? k=1 N I k(.).Second, we solve the investment problem in the general affine term structure model proposed by Duffie and Kan (1996) in which the functionsI k(.),k=1,...,Nare associated to HARA utility functions (with possibly different risk aversion parameters), and we show that the utility maximization problem leads to a Riccati ODE. Moreover, we extend to the multi-factor framework the stability result proved in Grasselli (2003), namely, the almost-sure convergence of the solution with respect to the parameters of the utility function.Mathematics Subject Classification(2000): 91B28Journal of Economic Literature Classification: G11 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose a generalization of the notion of comonotonicity by introducing and exploring the concept of conditional comonotonicity. We characterize this notion and we show by examples that conditional comonotonicity is the natural extension of the concept of comonotonicity to dynamic settings.Mathematics Subject Classification (2000):90A05, 60GxxJournal of Economic Literature Classification:D910, C610, G120 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss a practical method to price and hedge European contingent claims on assets with price processes which follow a jump-diffusion. The method consists of a sequence of trinomial models for the asset price and option price processes which are shown to converge weakly to the corresponding continuous time jump-diffusion processes. The main difference with many existing methods is that our approach ensures that the intermediate discrete time approximations generate models which are themselves complete, just as in the Black-Scholes binomial approximations. This is only possible by dropping the assumption that the approximations of increments of the Wiener and Poisson processes on our trinomial tree are independent, but we show that the dependence between these processes disappears in the weak limit. The approximations thus define an easy and flexible method for pricing and hedging in jump-diffusion models using explicit trees for hedging and pricing.Mathematics Subject Classification (2000):60B10, 60H35Journal of Economic Literature Classification:G13 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents a list of readings that may be especially useful to teachers of undergraduate economics, as well as other articles that are of broader cultural interest. 'The Economist' has another of those wonderful surveys by Frances Cairncross. This one is a survey of retirement titled 'Forever Young.' As usual it is a combination of surprising facts and clear analysis. A wonderful article illustrating entry and competition is 'In Chinatown, a $10 Trip Means War: Weary Owners Struggle to Stay Afloat in Cutthroat Competition' by Michael Luo, in the February 21, 2004 issue of the 'The New York Times'. To get the feel of a real Dutch auction, in which the auctioneer starts with a high price and then reduces it until a bidder accepts, students might enjoy an article by Elizabeth Pope, 'Let a Billion Flowers Bloom' in the Travel section of the March 28, 2004 issue of 'The New York Times'. Paul R. Portney labels his 'Market-based Approaches to Environmental Policy' as a refresher course. It belongs on the reading list of undergraduate courses. A number of economists are taking advantage of the Internet to post reflections and connections to economic news and events. Bill Goffe's Resources for Economists on the Internet even has a section for blogs and commentaries.

This article reports the results of a survey concerning the nature and extent of plagiarism in the economics profession. It could be argued that potential plagiarists are less likely to submit an article to a well-known journal. An ad hoc method of selecting twenty well-known U.S.-based and international journals from the list of respondents was used. The responses from this set are very similar to those of the entire sample. Where there are differences, editors from the list of twenty experience a bit less plagiarism and are less inclined to a code of ethics. Editors tend to rely on copyright law to protect themselves from unauthorized duplication of published materials. As such, there is little protection for the innovator of an idea presented at a conference, contained in a student's paper, or posted on the web. Moreover, the editors were almost evenly split on the notion that the use of an unattributed idea constitutes plagiarism. Thus, the relatively small number of reported instances is less than the actual number of occurrences. The majority of editors are not likely to publicize an instance of plagiarism. A reasonable majority of editors favor a code of ethics for the economics profession.

Presents an annotated listing of books on economics and related subjects. "Ethics, Economics and Politics: Principles of Public Policy," by Ian Little; "Principles of Economic Sociology," by Richard Swedberg; "Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science," by Charles Wheelan.

Presents the list of categories used for classifying books, book reviews, journal articles, and dissertations indexed in the periodicals "Journal of Economic Literature" and "EconLit." General Economics and Teaching; Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology; Mathematical and Quantitative Methods.

Wicksell's and Lindahl's ideas on public goods and decisions are reviewed in light of later developments in the theoretical economics literature. I begin by discussing their normative ideals, in particular the notion of justness, and the sources of the difficulties in reaching them. Wicksell's and Lindahl's ideal states, as well as the obstacles that they perceive, are compared to more recent views on free riding and on the behavior of elected representatives. Their views on political bargaining are then related to later concepts, in particular to the core of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We measure the past production of research articles by current members of European economics institutions. All EconLit journals are used, weighted to reflect differences in quality. Both a long (1971–2000) and a short (1996–2000) time period are considered. We also provide production indices that take into account the authors' career length. The total output of each research center is measured as well as its production per member. The focus is on 600 centers from eighteen European countries (EU 14, Israel, Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey). European centers are compared to the top sixty U.S. economics departments. Statistics regarding the concentration of article production across researchers, institutions, and countries are provided, as well as on publication habits. (JEL: A14, L11, R32) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a symposium of EEA-funded studies that evaluate economics research in Europe. The paper considers some general issues in evaluations, paying special attention to the problem of selecting journal weights, and notes some special features of the individual studies. Despite their very different approaches, the same group of institutions tend to appear at the top of all lists, though individual ranks are sensitive to the choice of more or less elitist journal weights. All the studies show that the gap between economics research in Europe and the United States is narrowing, but remains very wide. (JEL: A10, J44) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is still debatable whether scientific diversity is a virtue or a disadvantage for the development of a discipline. Nonetheless, diversity among scientists with respect to their journal quality perceptions plays an important role in hiring and promotion decisions. In this article we examine the degree of diversity within economics based on the journal quality perceptions of 2,103 AEA economists worldwide. Specifically, we empirically test for factors that might explain differences in an economist's journal quality perceptions. These factors include an economist's geographic origin, school of thought, journal affiliation, field of specialization and research orientation. Indeed, we find that a significant degree of diversity in journal quality perceptions exists between economists that belong in different subgroups. These results might explain the frequent debates in tenure and promotion committees where journal standings are used for the evaluation of a researcher's output. (JEL: A12, D12) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on a paper by Annette Vissing-Jorgensen which discusses the state of the behavioral finance literature as of October 2003. Vissing-Jorgensen discusses some fascinating evidence about 1998-2002. Like all data, this data has limitations. First, all survey data should be regarded with skepticism and this type of survey more than most. Second, it is a real shame this dataset starts in 1998 and does not include more of the pre-mania period. Despite these limitations, the data reveal many interesting facts that are useful for sorting out different hypotheses about the tech-stock mania. according to the commenter, Vissing-Jorgensen has done a great job in revealing the features of the data, taking what was undoubtedly a complicated and demanding task and making it look easy. There are many different ways this data could have been used, and the commenter says he is convinced that the graphs, regressions, and statistical tests are accurately telling readers what they need to know. Vissing-Jorgensen does many different things in the paper, but in this article, the commenter focuses only on the main survey results and interpret them from his own perspective of what the tech-stock mania period was about.

This article comments on a paper by Annette Vissing-Jorgensen which discusses the state of the behavioral finance literature as of October 2003. In the 1980s, Robert Shiller, Lawrence Summers, and Richard Thaler challenged the finance profession to take seriously the possibility that investor behavior and asset prices deviate from the predictions of simple rational models. Since that time, behavioral finance has become one of the most active areas in financial economics, maturing to the point where it can be summarized in both popular and professional books. Behavioral economics has had great success more generally, as illustrated by the award of the 2001 Clark Medal to Matthew Rabin and the 2002 Nobel Prize to Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith, and behavioral finance is probably the most successful application of this approach. Initially, the behavioral literature distinguished two groups of investors: rational investors and irrational noise traders. This raises the question of which investors play the role of noise traders. Much recent work has emphasized the distinction between individual investors, who may be particularly susceptible to cognitive limitations and psychological biases, and institutions, which seem likely to be more rational but may be limited in their risk-taking capacity.

Using data as reported in the JEL in 2000 and 1985, the authors examine the pricing and other characteristics of books. There has been a substantial rise in book prices, even in real terms, between the two years, which the smaller rise in average page length appears insufficient to justify. A major factor behind the rise would appear to be the increasing importance of foreign presses that not only sell at a higher average price than U.S. presses but are increasingly likely to do so. University presses and other not-for-profit publishers sell at substantially lower prices than commercial publishing houses and are more likely to publish in paperback than commercial publishing houses. The discount on paperbacks appears to have been relatively stable in the two years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which journal articles have had the most impact on finance research? Which journals dominated finance research in the 1990s? We answer these and similar questions using a comprehensive sample of journals, an extensive time period, and a new ranking method that avoids problems inherent in the existing literature. Among our findings: six of the 10 articles most highly cited by finance journals were published in econometrics or economics journals; Journal of Finance has the most citations, but it accounts for only one of the top 10 articles; and Journal of Financial Economics has the highest impact per article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the economic fundamentals of bank runs in the U.S. Alternative theoretical explanations for the determinants of bank runs; Model of bank runs that is standard in the economic literature; Conditions under which multiple equilibria arise; Policy implications of bank runs.

The dominant discourse in economic theory in Great Britain from the 1940s to the 1970s was Keynesian. The making of economic policy resulted from a complex interplay of economic, political and personal factors. The making of macroeconomic policy implies decisions made by politicians on the basis of advice from generalist Treasury officials. The problem for the substantial literature on Keynesian ideas and macroeconomic policy is to check whether economic advisers within the Keynesian tradition managed to influence the final decision takers. Analytical approaches need to be made explicit so that opportunistic selection of evidence, the use of initial assumptions to determine conclusions and the creation of straw women can all be avoided.

The article reviews the journal of economic literature related to time discounting and time preference in the U.S. It defines intertemporal choices as decisions involving tradeoffs among costs and benefits occurring at different times. In this article, the authors review empirical research on intertemporal choice, and present an overview of recent theoretical formulations. In section 2, the authors review the perspectives on intertemporal choice of John Rae and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century economists, and describe how these early perspectives interpreted intertemporal choice as the joint product of many conflicting psychological motives. In section 3, they examine the various assumptions underlying the discounted-utility (DU) model. The remaining sections reviews DU anomalies, the numerous alternative theoretical models and reviews attempts to estimate discount rates.

Introduces a series of articles published in the December 2001 issue of 'The Journal of Industrial Economics.'

This article appraises the book "Economic Thought and Modernization in Japan," edited by Shiro Sugihara and Toshihiro Tanaka. Economic discussion in Japan dates hack to the start of the Tokugawa period but it was mostly about the linkages between the economy and morality. The ideas of civil society and individualism had not yet made their appearance. Still, Baien Miura anticipated equilibrium analysis and wrote about the need to distribute the agricultural surplus widely among the people-perhaps through taxation or else a balance would not he maintained. The opening essays by Professors Shiro Sugihara and Masamichi Komuro summarize the early economic literature. The editors of this book did not provide a master list to help the readers understand which economics texts were translated into Japanese and in what date. The great industrialization debate of the 1890's led the Japanese to admire and emulate Germany. Germany was a latecomer to European industrialization but wasted no time in catching up.

The article reports on developments concerning the Econometric Society as of September 2, 1979. The membership of the Society have experienced a rebound within the past few months. The rebound in memberships and institutional subscriptions enjoyed by the "American Economic Review" in 1978 was not shared by "Econometrica" journal. Many memberships are likely to be added at the 1980 World Congress. Thirty new Fellows were elected in the Fall of 1978, bringing the total number of Fellows to 290, of whom 44 are inactive.