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At a time when increasing attention is being paid to the international comparison of the cost of living, this article begins with a catalog of the limitations of existing comparisons. The authors then analyze the major problems of estimation and interpretation. These problems include the determination of patterns of consumption and setting weights and prices; making monetary and fiscal adjustments: and, finally, accounting for international differences in the standard of living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on entrepreneurial history. One of the more interesting problems for business historians in Great Britain is why so little business history is taught at undergraduate level. The most that seems to happen is that an odd question or two on company history or on entrepreneurship is inserted in a finals examination paper usually in the subject specialism of economic history. There are few if any complete undergraduate courses devoted to the study of business history and even at post-graduate level it can scarcely be called a flourishing industry. At a conference held at Cranfield in March, 1973, on the theme of business histories and their use in management education it was apparently Manchester Polytechnic rather than a university college who presented a scheme of work destined for undergraduate students yet the distinguished university contributors among business historians who attended that conference would presumably hardly agree that business history was somehow academically at a level different from their own.