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The article presents a study which examined the readability scores of selected management journals over a five year period (1967 to 1971). The study measured ease of understanding and comprehension based on investigating the style of writing. The authors used the Flesch Reading Ease Test to determine the readability of the journals. The findings revealed that the majority of the journals surveyed have become more difficult to read and only three of the ten journals showed a statistically significant change in reading ease scores.

Nearly all journal rankings in economics use some weighted average of citations to calculate a journal’s impact. These rankings are often used, formally or informally, to help assess the publication success of individual economists or institutions. Although ranking methods and opinions are legion, scant attention has been paid to the usefulness of any ranking as representative of the many articles published in a journal. First, because the distributions of citations across articles within a journal are seriously skewed, and the skewness differs across journals, the appropriate measure of central tendency is the median rather than the mean. Second, large shares of articles in the highest-ranked journals are cited less frequently than typical articles in much-lower-ranked journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial econometrics is a fast-growing field in the series of quantitative disciplines, auxiliaries of economics and related social sciences. Space, friction, interdependence, spatio-temporal components, externalities and many other aspects interact and should be treated adequately in this field. The publication of the Paelinck and Klaassen book in the late 1970s generated virtually the field spatial econometrics. This article studies the diffusion of spatial econometrics, through experienced history on the one hand, on the other through bibliometric methods. Although this field was an “Invisible College” up to 2006 (absence of any organization in form of association, conference, journal, etc.), the databases depict a fast diffusion in the past and strong prospects for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the 23rd volume of the journal entitled, Contemporary Economic Policy. The volume, which was published in 2005, comprised 48 articles and 88 authors and coauthors from a variety of topic areas as defined by the Journal of Economic Literature. An important contribution to improve the quality of the journal is the refereeing process.

This essay examines the impact of the work of Gustav Schmoller in the economics literature in Britain and America. It shows that Schmoller's reputation was not significantly eroded as a result of the Methodenstreit. In particular, Alfred Marshall retained a high opinion of Schmoller's contribution and aligned himself with Schmoller's mature methodological position. However, references to Schmoller's work began to decline after the publication of the two volumes of the Grundriss in 1900 and 1904. Nevertheless, a direct theoretical assault on Schmoller's contribution did not appear in the Anglophone journals of economics until the 1930s when Friedrich Hayek and Lionel Robbins wrongly caricatured Schmoller as an opponent of all theory and an advocate of atheoretical description. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents a list of articles relating to finance and accounting that appeared in various periodicals. These included "Shubik on Stable Prices" in the January 2005 issue of the "American Journal of Economics and Sociology," "National Values and Economic Growth" in the April 2005 issue of the "American Journal of Economics and Sociology," "Financial Cooperatives: Structure, Conduct and Performance" in the September 2005 issue of the "Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics," "Structural Changes in the Development of European Cooperative Societies" in the March 2006 issue of the "Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics," and "Job Search Skills, Employer Size and Wages" in the February 2005 issue of "The Applied Economics Letters."

Presents an index in the November 2005 issue of the periodical "Asian-Pacific Economic Literature."

Purpose - Within the area of economics, the value attached to highly-ranked journal publications, such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and Quarterly Journal of Economics, in tenure, promotion, and merit pay processes is often several times greater than that of second-tier publications, such as Economic Inquiry and the Southern Economic Journal. As a result one would expect that author(s) will put forth relatively more production "effort" in order to gain acceptance in a top-tier journal. The additional production effort may come in the form of making the manuscript available to a larger number of outside readers, perhaps via seminars and conferences. This study aims to examine whether the economics research production process differs between top- and second-tier journal outlets. Design/methodology/approach - Data are collected from feature articles published in two top-tier and two second-tier economics journals for the period 1995-1999, inclusive. Means difference tests on various "production statistics" across journals are conducted/presented. Findings - Tests presented in this study indicate that the fraction of the "scientific team" whose contributions are recognized in the acknowledgment footnote of research articles appearing in top-tier economics journal outlets is, on average, greater than that of articles appearing in second-tier economics journal outlets. Originality/value - By examining within-discipline aspects of intellectual property rights assignment in economics, our study extends the work of Laband (2002), which examined interdisciplinary differences (i.e. agricultural economics versus economics) in the assignment of intellectual property rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article presents information on several categories used to classify books, book reviews, journal articles, and dissertations in the "Journal of Economic Literature." Following are some of the categories--general economics and teaching, schools of economic thought and methodology, mathematical and quantitative methods, microeconomics, macroeconomics and monetary economics.

Business magazines provide need-to-know information to decision makers and professionals. Prices, product variety, and diversity of those magazines follow from publishers' differentiation strategies, which in turn depend on market characteristics. Competition and concentration stimulate differentiation strategies, whereas they have opposite effects on prices. However, cost structures and demand conditions make differentiation strategies dependent on the willingness of audiences to pay high subscription prices. Also, noncommercial publishers adopt strategies other than commercial ones. In combination, these factors determine prices, product variety, and magazine diversity in markets for agricultural, business services, and transportation magazines in the Netherlands in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Donald F. Gordon hypothesized that mathematical complexity in economics is inversely related to operationalism. Here we (i) operationalize Gordon's hypothesis, (ii) test for the significance of trends in complexity for the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and (iii) test Gordon's hypothesis by conducting analyses of the contents of articles from the American Economic Review (AER), as well as the contents of articles citing the AER articles. The results do not refute the hypothesis that complexity crowds out operationalism in economics. Additionally, the presence of significant, positive trends toward complexity suggests that the magnitude of the crowding out is on the rise in these journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lists the feature articles published in the "Canadian Economic Observer" from January of 1994 until December of 2004. "National versus Domestic Output: A Measure of Economic Maturity?"; "Social Assistance by Province, 1993-1999"; "Canada's imports by county"; "Canada's Trade with China"; "Terms of Trade, Gross Domestic Product and the Exchange Rate"; "Research and Development in the service sector"; "Recent trends in retailing."

Presents a list of research papers submitted for publication in the May 2004 issue of "Asia-Pacific Economic Literature."

Presents an index of countries appeared in the articles of the November 2003 issue of the journal "Asian-Pacific Economic Literature."

Lists feature articles published in the 'Canadian Economic Observer' from 1990 through June 2003. 'The import intensity of provincial exports' in June 2003; 'The effects of recessions on the service industries' in August 2002; 'Advanced technology use in manufacturing during the 1990s,' in March 2000.

Lists books on various topics of economics, received by the periodical 'The Economic Journal,' as of June 2003. 'Critical Perspectives On International Politics Economy,' edited by Jason P. Abbott and Owen Worth; 'Governance, Corruption and Economic Performance,' edited by George T. Abed and Sanjeev Gupta; 'The Globalizing Learning Economy,' edited by Daniele Archibugi and Bengt-Ake Lundvall.

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]

The article lists books or publications received by "The Economic Journal" as of February 2002. They include "Innovation and the Growth of Cities," by Zoltan J. Acs, "Developing Countries in the World Trading System: The Uruguay Round and Beyond," edited by Ramesh Adhikari, Prema-Chandra Athukoral, "Instruments for Climate Policy: Limited Versus Unlimited Flexibility," edited by Johan Albrecht, "Placing the Social Economy: Contemporary Political Economy Series," edited by Ash Amin, Angus Cameron and Ray Hudson, and "Landmark Papers in General Equilibrium Theory, Social Choice and Welfare," edited by Kenneth J. Arrow and Gerard Debreu.

The author reviews periodical literature on economic history published in 2001. The focus of articles in 2001 was on evidence for trade before 1100, particularly among archaeologists. Various articles add to the knowledge of Anglo-Saxon material culture and industry. They discuss the character of Anglo-Saxon lordship and kingship, estate organization in the lowlands, money supply in England, pervasiveness of commercial values, growth of settlements, forest economy, water supply in London, stone from the North Downs, analysis of sherds from yard middens in the hamlet of West Cotton and ecclesiastical institutions. One paper examines the implications of economic and demographic change for the market in customary land. Another argues against the proposition that heiresses were generally wedded to the heirs of established families.

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

This paper examines data on the institutional backgrounds of editors and authors of the top 30 economics journals, identified by their 1995 citation impact. It is revealed, for example, that 70.8% of the journal editors were located in the United States, and twelve U.S. universities accounted for the location of more than 38.9%. Concerning journal article authors, 65.7% were located in U.S. institutions and twelve U.S. universities accounted for 21.8%. Arguably, the degree of institutional and geographical concentration of editors and authors may be unhealthy for innovative research in economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surveys the history of 'Metroeconomica' periodical on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. Founding in 1949 by Eraldo Fossati; Original inception as an international forum on economic theory; Profile of the journal during its first decade; Shift in publisher to Blackwell Publishers; Editors; Editorial policy; Contributions; Standards.

Focuses on a study which evaluated the comprehensiveness and composition of university library holdings of economics journals in the U.S. Discussion on the importance of library resources; Description of methodology; Types of schools considered; Summary statistics on the library holdings of schools; List of the widely held economics journals by the schools.

The article classifies economics journals by subject categories. They are classified under the headings: General Economics and Teaching, Methodology and History of Economic Thought, Mathematical and Quantitative Methods, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics, International Economics, Financial Economics, Public Economics, Health, Education, and Welfare, Labor and Demographic Economics, Law and Economics, Industrial Economics, Business Administration and Business Economics in the fields of Accounting and Marketing, Economic History, Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth, Economic Systems, Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics and other special topics.

The article presents a list of periodicals of economics as of December 1997 as well as the papers found in some of them. The list includes "Determinants of Management Forecast Precision," by Baginski and colleagues, published in the "Accounting Review," "The Future of Fundamental Tax Reform," by A. J. Auerbach, published in the American Economic Review," "Efficient Food Safety Regulation in the Food Manufacturing Sector," by J. M. Antle, published in the "American Journal of Agriculture Economics."

The article investigates the changing industrial organization of the economics journal market over the period 1970-1990. The authors collected detailed information on citations in 1970 for 50 selected economics journals indexed by the Index of Economics Articles. The findings suggest that the overall growth in citations to scholarly economics literature over the 1970-1990 period exceeded the growth in the quantity of published, scholarly, economics literature. In addition, the number of pages published in scholarly economics journals increased between 1970 and 1990. On the other hand, there was a steady decline in concentration of citations among the top economics journals over the period 1965-1990 due to existing journals taking market share from the premier journals.

The article presents abstracts of articles published in various journals of economics. The article "The Perception of Man and the Conception of Society: Two Approaches to Understanding Society," by Karl Brunner that published in the July 1987 issue of the journal "Economic Inquiry," states that social sciences offer two distinct approaches to understanding society. One originated with the Scottish moral philosophers and shaped the discipline of economics. The other emerged from the French enlightenment and influenced the study of sociology. The two approaches are based on radically different perceptions of man and man's relation to society. The paper explores these alternative hypotheses and examines some major implications. It concludes that the hypothesis reaching back to the Scottish philosophers provides the basis for a unified approach in the social sciences. The paper "Law and Economics From Different Perspectives," by Herbert H. Liebhafsky, that published in the December 1987 issue of the "Journal of Economic Issues," compares and contrasts two different conceptions of the relationship between law and economics.

Presents an index of articles related to several branches of economics published in various journals, as of June 1988. Information on issues of economic periodicals in which the articles have been published; Authors who have contributed in the articles; Page numbers of the respective articles.

Provides information about the classification system of articles and abstracts published in the June 1988 issue of the "Journal of Economic Literature." Various branches of economics in which the articles and abstracts have been characterized; Information on the page numbers of the respective articles.

The article provides information about contents of various periodicals related to economics. The December 1987 issue of the journal "American Economic Review" contains articles "Operative Gift and Bequest Motives," by A.B. Abel; "Ski-Lift Pricing, With Applications to Labor and Other Markets," by R.J. Barro and P.M. Romer; "The Cyclical Behavior of Marginal Cost and Price," by M. Bils; "The Public Finance of a Protective Tariff: The Case of an Oil Import Fee," by D.S. Bizer and C. Stuart; "Secession and the Limits of Taxation: Toward a Theory of Internal Exit," by J.M. Buchanan and R.L. Faith; "Industrialization, Deindustrialization, and North-South Trade," by A. Burgstaller; "Do Biases in Probability Judgment Matter in Markets? Experimental Evidence," by C.F. Camerer; "Priority Service: Pricing, Investment, and Market Organization," by H. Chao and R. Wilson. The January 1988 issue of the journal "American Journal of Economics and Sociology" includes articles "Competition and Conflict in the U.S. Atlantic Coast Menhaden Industry," by V.J. Blomo, M. Orbach and J.R. Maiolo; "Discrimination and Favoritism in the U.S. Labor Market: The Cost to a Wage Earner of Being Female and Black and the Benefit of Being Male and White," J. Cotton.

The purpose of this study is to provide a ranking of journals based on their relative influences on the writings of academics, either within the economics profession or in the world at large.[2] The measurement used to create this ranking, described in detail below, is the number of citations that authors make to articles appearing in various journals. After a brief discussion of several previous studies, we proceed to a more complete explanation of our procedures and results. We have endeavored to rank journals in a way which will prove meaningful to members of the profession. We have attempted to control for both journal size and age in constructing a measure of journal impact and consider this procedure to be a significant improvement over previous methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the results of a survey that can begin to assess the current magnitude of the lag problem, the major components of that problem, and the success of the various efforts to alleviate it. Information about the lags involved in the 40 most recently published articles in each journal was solicited from the editors of 66 journals whose contents are routinely recorded in the "Journal of Economic Literature." Twenty editors responded directly to the request, and their reports formed the foundation of this study. Seven other journals were also included because they publish the lag in formation with each article. The article ranks the 25 journals in terms of theft total lags. Economics Letters has accomplished its goal of rapid publication and ranks first. The article also ranks the participating journals according to the average time lag between the submission of the original manuscript and the receipt of the revision upon which acceptance was based. Another table records the average lags between the receipt of the accepted revision and the ultimate publication of the successful articles. Publication lags are quite severe in the economics literature. An author can expect to wait 15.3 months between submission and publication in a specialized journal, and 23.3 months in a major journal.

The article presents several abstracts of articles related to economics, included in the September 1979 issues of the "Journal of Economic Literature." Abstracts have been divided into different subtopics including general economics, theory, history, systems; history of economic thought; economic fluctuations; economic growth; economic development and planning theory and policy; country studies, etc. Some abstracts that have been mentioned are, "Wissenschaftliche Literatur als Medium wissenschaftlichen Fortschritts," by K. Borchardt, published in the December 1978 issue of the journal "Jahrbucher fur Nationalokonomie und Statistik," deals with the development of the media of our scientific communications network, the peculiarities of scientific publishing, and some critical questions of regulation in this field of social activity. "Theory of Competitive Equilibrium in Stock Market Economies," by S.J. Gossman and O.D. Hart, published in the March 1979 issue of the journal "Econometrica," proposes an objective for firms to pursue that generalizes profit maximization. "Non-Cooperative Equilibria for Exit Supergames," by J.W. Friedman, published in the February 1979 issue of the journal "Internal Economic Review," formulates a supergame model in which each player has the option of participating, or not, during any or all time periods.

The article presents information about contents of current periodicals related to economics that appeared in the 1978 issue of the "Journal of Economic Literature." The contents of 1976 issue vol. 16, No. 2 of the journal "Acta Oeconomica," are as follows, the article "Structural Development and Investments in the Hungarian Industry," by B. Botos, "Analysis of Factors Influencing the Organization of Working Places," by G. ParánYi, "Productivity and Growth in the Hungarian Economy," by Z. Román. The conents of the January 1978 issue, vol. 30, No. 1, of the journal "Agricultural Economic Research," are: "Currency Adjustments Under Trade Restrictions," by M. E. Bredahi, and A. W. Womack, "Estimating Exponential Utility Functions," by S. T. Buccola, and B. C. French, "Growth as a Differential Equation," by C. Edwards, "Social Returns to Disease and Parasite Control in Agriculture: Witchweed in the United States," by P. M. Emerson, and G. E. Plato, Planning Now?," by J. Fedkiw, "Specification of Bernoullian Utility Function in Decision Analysis," by W. W. Lin, and H. S. Chang, "Farmland Values and Urbanization," by D. E. Morris.

The article presents abstracts of some articles on economics. One of the abstracts titled "The University Professor As a Utility Maximizer and Producer of Learning, Research, and Income," by W.E. Becker proposes plans for improving the teaching quality at major universities. These schemes typically do not rest on identifiable economic models. In this paper, a professorial decision-making model is presented for the purpose of exploring alternative plans to raise teaching quality. Using a Lancaster methodology, where time is a variable input, it is demonstrates that an increase in the pecuniary return to teaching will raise teaching quality, while exogenous changes in teaching and research technology need not. Another article titled "The Relative Quality of Economics Journals Revisited," by C.C. McDonough examines the degree of commonality among several criteria of journal quality and to develop a grand ranking for economics journals. Seventy economics journals are evaluated on the criteria of institutional affiliation, peer evaluation, familiarity, and citation frequency. Examination of the degree of association among the resulting rankings reveals high positive correlations. Accordingly the best estimate of the true ranking of the journals is obtained by the order of the sums of ranks.

The article presents abstracts of several research articles published in various periodicals. The article "Rankings in Ph.D. Programs in Economics and the Relative Publishing Performance of their Ph.D's: The Experience of the 1960's," by T.D. Hogan, published in December 1973 issue of "Western Economics," presents tabulation of publishing output of economists during the 1960's in three top economics journals classified according to the degree origin of author. The analysis also explores the hypothesis that publishing performance in top-rated economics journals is a function of the quality of graduate training. Non-parametric tests provide evidence of a highly significant relationship between the quality ratings of graduate programs and the publishing output of their graduates. The article "The Quality of Life: Toward a Microeconomic Definition," by L. Wingo, published in the February 1973 issue of "Urban Studies," concerns over the quality of life uniquely characterizes the political economies of the advanced industrial nations of the world were the marginal utility of private consumption declines as income grows.

The article presents a list of articles published in various journals related to economics. Some of the articles included in January 1974 issue of "Accounting Review," are "Transfer Pricing--A Synthesis," by A.R. Abdel-Khalik and E.J. Lusk; "Reconciling Economic Depreciation With Allocation," by C.L. Bullock; "Opportunity and Incremental Cost: Attempt to Define in System Terms: Comment; Extending the Applicability of Probabilistic Management Planning and Control Models," by E.E. Burch and W.R. Henry; and "A Mathematical Approach to the Analysis and Design of Internal Control Systems," by S.L. Buzby. Articles published in the March 1974 issue of "American Economic Review," includes "Limited Knowledge and Economic Analysis," by K.J. Arrow; "The Precautionary Demand for Reserves," by E. Baltensperger; "Default Risk, Homemade Leverage, and the Modigliani-Miller Theorem," by D.P. Baron; "Risk Premiums and the Life Cycle Hypothesis," by R. Bowden; and Product Liability: The Case of an Asset With Random Life," by J.P. Brown.

Abstract--This study finds that a strong bibliometric regularity exists in the publication pattern in the economics literature; the number of authors publishing n papers is approximately 1/n[sup c] of those publishing one paper. The economics literature conforms very well to the model with c = 1.84 if data are taken from a large collection of journals. When applied to individual journals, the result shows that values of c range from 2.04 to 3.11. This paper also reports the degree of author concentration among leading economics journals. Finally, this study finds that the graduates of three graduate programs account for more than half of the top 100 authors, indicating strong institutional dominance in the production of the most prolific authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about literature on British economic and social history published in different journals. The article "Trade and Settlement in Central and Northern Europe Up to and During the Viking Period," by Herbert Jankuhn, published in the "Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland," focuses on the changing patterns of trade during the years 450- 1050 A.D. using archaeological, numismatic, and literary sources to delineate the networks of trade which continued to exist after the withdrawal of the legions from the frontier and the realignment of routes during the century after 550 A.D. The article "A Late Medieval Guide to Land Purchase," by J.D. Alsop, published in "Agricultural History," deals with the mechanisms of property transfer. The article "The Bringing up of Children in Good Learning and Manners: A Survey of Secular Educational Provision in the North of England," is concerned with the educational facilities available to the peasantry and the job opportunities open to those who became literate.

This study complements existing research on the contributions and rankings of female economists with a descriptive analysis of the prevalence of gender issues in U.S. economics journals. Assuming that labor economics and development economics are the fields most likely to examine gender issues, I compare the incidence of gender-related articles in the last decade in leading U.S. general economics journals with top journals in the labor and development fields. I also examine the gender composition of authors of gender-related articles in all journals. Results indicate that the highest ranked field-journals publish a higher percentage of articles on gender than do the leading general journals from among their labor and development papers. And unlike the common perception, a disproportionate number of the gender articles are written by men rather than women, particularly in the labor and general journals. The results suggest that departments that use publication in general journals as a proxy for overall research quality, and which do not consider alternative evaluations of research as potential full substitutes, may be using biased measures of the quality and importance of research on gender. The publication policies of general economics journals and the promotion policies of certain economics departments may have a direct effect in reducing both the number and perceived prestige of voices addressing issues of gender in economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the issues related to proliferation of American academic economic theories that are not supported by empirical data. Wassily Leontief, a Nobel Laureate, and a president of the American Economic Association, anticipated that, as academic economics "lags intellectually," people in adjoining fields will eventually be vocal in their dismay at the stable, stationary equilibrium and the splendid isolation of academic economics. Approximately thirteen years have gone by since Leontief published his original paper. The article also presents tables showing twenty years of data collected by the journal "American Economic Review." A recent study by David Figlio generalizes on the proportions of empirical articles published from 1960 to 1992 in "the top ten" economics journals. He ranked them by the joint result of three "quality" measures--peer evaluation, citation frequency, and institutional affiliation. His study was offset by the judgment that, although there has been a boom in empirical analysis of economic issues in the past two decades, "relatively little" of the results have been published in major economic journals--a consequence of better computer technology and better research methodology.

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.

ABSTRACT: Evidence on review times for academic journals is often based on anecdotal experience. The purpose of this paper is to provide descriptive statistics on the time which papers spend under review and awaiting publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results from a randomized experiment conducted at The American Economic Review on the effects of double-blind versus single-blind peer reviewing on acceptance rates and referee ratings indicate that acceptance rates are lower and referees are more critical when the reviewer is unaware of the author's identity. These patterns are not significantly different between female and male authors. Authors at top-ranked universities and at colleges and low-ranked universities are largely unaffected by the different reviewing practices, but authors at near-top-ranked universities and at nonacademic institutions have lower acceptance rates under double-blind reviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report covers operations of the editorial office of the journal "American Economic Review". A new system that significantly decentralizes the editorial decision-making process through the use of co-editors has been implemented. Experience with the new process is still limited, however, and a more complete report on the results of its implementation will have to await another occasion. Manuscripts submitted for publication in the Review since March 1, 1985 have been handled by a new procedure. Each paper was assigned to one of three co-editors, or retained by the managing editor, for supervision through the review process and for a final decision on the manuscript status. It is hopes that the new editorial procedure will allow due recognition in the editorial process for the wide variety in both the substantive and methodological character of manuscripts submitted to the Review. It should also be possible to obtain these benefits without a significant increase in the length of time required to review and process submitted manuscripts.

This article presents a report of the managing editor of the journal "The American Economic Review," regarding manuscripts as of May 1984. The author says that there were no changes in editorial policy to report for the year 1983 as compared with 1982. The journal been less than 100 percent successful in ensuring that authors have a final editorial decision within three months of the date that their manuscript is received at the editorial office, but the exceptional cases are mainly ones in which increased speed would be associated with less considered editorial assessments. The recent history of manuscript submissions and papers published is shown in tables 1 and 2 of the article. The author says that the journal "The American Economic Review," received 932 papers in 1983. This is a more than 10 percent increase over 1982, and indicates that the author's earlier expectation of a leveling off in submissions was nonrational. The generally quick turnaround time at the review seems to carry more weight with respective authors than does the manuscript submission fee. The disposition of manuscripts received during 1982 and 1983 is shown in table 3 of the article. The acceptance rate for 1983 is significantly lower than last year.

There have been a number of articles written in the last few years describing the attributes of various economics journals, including their quality, acceptance practices, and so on. Presumably one could use these data both to determine which journals to buy and read, and to which journals to submit one's papers. This article is concerned with the latter issue; in particular, the author has derived the optimal strategy for submitting manuscripts to economics journals. A problem that is faced periodically is that of deciding as to which of the many available journals should a paper be sent? For highly specialized papers, the answer is sometimes obvious. In many cases, however, any one of several journals may be appropriate. This is the case dealt with in this article. The first problem in doing this analysis was to decide what the individual might be trying to accomplish by his or her journal choice. In general cases of this sort, one might suppose that individuals made decisions in order to maximize some kind of pecuniary return.

The article presents the report of the managing editor of the Journal of Economic Literature for 2004. When the journal was established, the objective was to have a journal primarily concerned with the literature in economics. The plan has been to publish four survey articles each year. That 1974 opportunity seemed to serve a double purpose; not only did it result in what is clearly a significant contribution itself, but it also drew attention to an earlier article of particular historical importance. A total of 1,200-1,300 books have been annotated, classified in thirty-six categories, as well as all new journals. Reviews of about 170-185 books per year are published. The directive to absorb the Journal of Economic Abstracts and continue Index of Economic Abstracts meant that there was no option in the initial selection of journals. In the interest of cost reduction to change have been instituted in the abstracting arrangements. The maximum length of abstracts has been reduced from 300 to 100 words. Most abstracting agreements have also been selective, generally restricted to about one-half the articles in any annual output of a journal.

This article presents a list of books and journal articles on international trade and finance and economic relations between countries. Some of the books, listed here, are: "State Building Failure in British Ireland and French Algeria," by Ian Lustick; "Agriculture in a Turbulent World Economy: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of Agricultural Economists," edited by Allen Maunder; "Europe, America and the World Economy," edited by Loukas Tsoukalis; "Political Economy of Nigeria," edited by Claude Ake; and "Bulgarian Economy in the Twentieth Century," by John R. Lampe. Some of the articles, listed here, are: "North-South Interdependence: Projections of the World Economy, 1985-2000," by Akira Onishi, published in a 1986 issue of the "Journal of Policy Modeling"; "If America Won't Lead," by Alan J. Stoga, published in the Fall 1986 issue of the journal "Foreign Policy"; and "A Note on Africa and the Exclusive Economic Zone," by H.S. Kibola, published in a 1986 issue of the journal "Ocean Development and International Law."