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The article focuses on the role of monetary policy in economic stabilization in the U.S. during the 1950s and the politics of monetary policy making. The author describes the interrelations between monetary, fiscal and debt policy and how they all contribute to economic stability. He advocates a cooperative working arrangement between the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, as they balance monetary policy and the public debt. Instead of trying to separate monetary and debt policy, he feels they need to be used together, strategically, to ensure continued economic growth.

The article presents commentary and criticism on the report "Co-ordination of Monetary, Bank Supervisory, and Loan Agencies of the Federal Government," by Clark Warburton, originally published in the June 1950 issue of the journal. Three primary areas where the author disagrees with Warburton's conclusions are addressed, including the monetary policy implications of Federal Reserve "independence," the fundamental purpose of deposit insurance, and the primary role of bank supervision within the federal system.

The article discusses bank supervision and its relationship to monetary policy in the United States. The author notes that the objectives of bank supervision are vague, and its powers spread across various authorities, both state and federal. Practical effects of supervision are discussed, as are arguments against simplification and consolidation of supervisory duties. The author presents the case in favor of consolidation and notes the impact this would have on bank liquidations and monetary policy.

This article discusses the effects of inflation on income and wealth between 1950 and 1971 which differ markedly from the current period. The aggregate data of the U.S. show that both total and per capita real output and income, before and after taxes, have grown persistently and substantially during the long inflationary period since 1950. Inflation redistributes the real purchasing power from those whose money incomes rise less rapidly relative to the prices they pay to those whose incomes rise more rapidly. Unanticipated inflation also redistributes existing wealth from creditors to debtors when debts are stated in fixed dollar terms, and from those whose assets rise more slowly in price to those whose assets rise more rapidly. The lack of substantial differences attributable to inflation might be explained by widespread investor anticipation of inflation and its results. The effects have been unexpected ones as on income account, recent inflation periods have seen a substantial shift in current income from business profits to wages and salaries.

Apparently somewhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of all economists make a significant part of their living by teaching as of May 1984. Yet only a minuscule part of their professional training is focused on how to become a good teacher. It is not clear that teaching performance in the U.S. is much better now than it was twenty-five or fifty years ago. The Committee on Economic Education (CEE) of the American Economic Association (AEA) has since the 1950's operated under a broad and challenging mandate to help improve the teaching in college and university economics. The CEE played a major role in a big push to improve teaching at all levels during the 1960's. Activities included a National Task Force on Economic Education, comprised of six of the nation's most distinguished economists who were asked to suggest the economic essentials that each citizen-to-be should have in democratic, largely market-directed economy, a year-long CBS and PBS economics course, including work for credit at many colleges and universities, a nationwide program of summer workshops for teachers and a major push on research on the effectiveness of different kinds of teaching.

The article discusses the U.S. problem of rearmament, recovery, and avoidance of price inflation. An acceptable monetary policy needs to be calculated to achieve all three objectives, plus the maintenance of full employment once obtained. The rapid surge toward full employment and the pressures for arms production are likely to cause conflicts of interest, especially over wage increases. Adoption of a stable policy as the basis for monetary and fiscal policy might provide the foundation for a workable "truce" between labor, monetary authorities, and those in charge of rearmament.

This article presents abstracts of several papers published in the June 1965 issue of American Economic Review. In the article Economic Education: Aspirations and Achievements, the G. L. Bach and Phillip Saunders described the present state of economics in U.S. high schools. While the article Biased Efficiency Growth and Factor Substitution in the U.S. Economy, 1899-1960, dealt with the central issue of the form taken by increases in the efficiency of conventionally measured labor and capital inputs. In the article Regulation and Conspiracy, the Fred M. Westfield investigated the relationship between profits earned and prices paid for capital goods purchased by the privately-owned public utility firm whose rate of return is limited by a regulatory authority.

This article focuses on the proposal of the American Economic Association's Committee on Economic Education to improve the teaching of economics in the United States. A planning committee and a group of consultants from economics, psychology and education will be assembled to plan a pilot-plan operation. The aim is that over a period of five years a version of the working model would be introduced on a continuing self-sustaining basis in at least ten graduate departments. The committee has proposed a series of reading books, which probably will be published annually by Richard Irwin Inc., under the editorship of an individual to be chosen with the approval of the committee. To help meet the experimentation needs of the economic teachers, the Journal of Economic Education was established. This journal has a subscription list of over 2,000, and has published a number of very interesting articles. The committee is working again with the Joint Council and has tentative plans for a summer 1974 workshop on research in economic education for new Ph.D's going to their teaching posts. If undertaken, it will include perhaps twenty-five new Ph.D's who are particularly interested in research to evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches and techniques in teaching.

The proceedings of the eighty-second annual meeting of the American Economic Association (December 28-30, 1969) are presented. Among the items are a "Statement of Concern of the Caucus of Black Economists to the American Economic Association," a "Report of the Association's Representatives to the Grove Park Institute," and a "Report of the Representative to the National Bureau of Economic Research."

This article focuses on results of a nationwide study of the economic understanding of a large sample of all high school social studies teachers in the U.S. These results indicated that teachers who had taken one or two semesters of elementary economics in college did not do significantly better on a widely used "Test of Economic Understanding" than did those who had taken no college economics, and that not until the teachers had taken five or more college economics courses did they perform significantly better on the test that those who had had no economics. Different hypotheses have been advanced to explain this result. One is that high school social studies teachers retain little from their college economics courses because they have taken relatively weak courses at relatively weak colleges. This note presents evidence on how much lasting learning in economics occurred at institutions of five different types, evidence which suggests that the lasting results were greatest at small liberal arts colleges and least at large universities, with intermediate results at other types of institutions. The results also provide separate data on students in "education" majors and in other undergraduate fields.

In recent years, widespread concern has been expressed over the low level of economic literacy of the general public. Since apparently only a small portion of all future citizen-voters will ever take as much as one economics course in college, attention has been increasingly focused on the possibility of developing at least a modicum of economic understanding through teaching in the high schools. Concern for this problem has developed gradually within the economics profession, culminating in the policy statement adopted by the American Economic Association's (AEA) Executive Committee in March, 1964 and the establishment of a new action-oriented Committee on Economic Education. Prior to this action the Association's previous Committee on Economic Education had for some years attempted to stimulate economists to help high school teachers and administrators with this task, mainly through attention to the problem at annual AEA meetings. During the past five years, however, a more concerted effort has developed, including at least four major projects, two of which have involved AEA participation or sponsorship.

The article discusses the problems associated with teaching economics at high school level in the U.S. It says that the attitude of the economics profession toward economics in the high schools has generally been one of disdain and disinterest. While an appreciable number of economists have participated actively in helping to improve high school economics, in general economists have apparently felt that it is better to get beginning economics students in college who have not had high school economics, because they generally have to unteach a good deal of what they have learned in high school. They also believe that economics is too difficult and too important to teach in the high schools anyhow. Hence, it is better to do nothing at all with economics in the high schools. The whole business is terribly low level, and somebody else ought to do something about it if anything is to be done. The article argues that this position is indefensible and, indeed, intolerable. It is required to take some major steps in the profession to improve the teaching of economics in high schools and to urge widespread participation in further steps to continue this improvement.

This article describes an investigation of the "discriminatory" effects of tight money, which isolates these effects by studying the differential lending-investing policies during the 1955-57 period of "tight" banks in contrast with those of "loose" banks in the U.S. To measure the change in tightness between October 1955 and October 1957 two tests were initially applied. All individual banks were ranked by the decrease in the looseness ratio between October 1955 and October 1957. Banks were ranked according to the percentage increase in their deposits over the period. For the individual bank, as distinguished from the banking system, it is primarily gain or loss of deposits, which makes the bank looser or tighter for new lending and investing. The simplest measure of whether an individual bank is growing looser or tighter is the extent to which it is gaining or losing deposits. Banks with the greatest loss of deposits showed the greatest increase in tightness, with others ranked in order of deposit gain. The rank-order results for individual banks were similar using these two methods over the 1955-57 period. The change-in-deposits method both seemed more significant in explaining individual bank lending-investment behavior and offered a more sharply discriminating measure as among individual banks.

As war prosperity brought an end to the worst depression in history, there was general agreement that preparations should be made to prevent a similar disaster in the future. Even the wartime government of Great Britain, despite its basically conservative character, accepted as one of their primary postwar aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment in the 1944 White Paper on Employment Policy. In the U.S., the same movement led to the passage of the Employment Act of 1946, with its obligation to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power. Although one of the things to be contained in the economic report provided for by the act is a review of economic conditions during the preceding year, there is nothing else in the act which specifies the period to which recommendations are to apply. But the author believes that most economists have from the start felt that the basic function of the council was to prevent serious depressions such as that which struck in 1929.

The article focuses on introductory courses in economics in the U.S. Nearly everyone agrees that to be successful, elementary economics courses must have effects that last beyond the final examination. This article summarizes the results of a small exploratory study of the extent to which the economic understanding, attitudes, and interests developed in a one-semester elementary economics course remained some two years after the conclusion of the course. On a nationally developed test involving economic analysis at a very elementary level, students who took no further work in economics lost by the end of their senior year about 10 percent of the score they had achieved at the end of their sophomore course. In spite of this decay, however, their test scores were still significantly higher than the scores of a similar group of sophomores tested before taking the introductory course in economics. Students who took additional courses in economics in their junior-senior years attained significantly higher test scores on the two-years-after basis than at the end of the elementary course.

The article examines the allegation that U.S. citizens have a low level of economic understanding as of 1966. The results of small-scale studies on the economic literacy of the U.S. public, both school children and adults, is discussed. The reasons for the low level of economic literacy possessed by U.S. citizens are enumerated. A tabular representation of economic understanding of different groups across the country is presented. The article also presents suggestions for improving economic understanding in the country.

This article provides information about the plan for a constant purchasing power government bond in the U.S. The essential feature of such security would be its redeemability in terms of an amount of dollars representing a stable amount of purchasing power rather than a constant amount of dollars. Stable purchasing power bonds may prove a helpful contribution to the U.S. Department of Treasury's endeavor to restrict the net income contributing effects of defense financing, since the offering of such bonds promises to increase the extent to which department borrowing may syphon funds from the active income stream into defense outlays. A cost of living index appears to be the best choice for a constant purchasing power guide, especially in view of the primary appeal of this sort of security to individual savers to whom the cost of living is apt to be the major factor in constant purchasing power considerations.

This article presents a report from the Committee on Economic Education of the American Economic Association in the U.S. It summarizes the main activities of the committee during the 1970 such as the establishment of the National Question Bank, a national competition, publication of the new "Journal of Economic Education," and the operation of the Visiting Scientists Program. This Committee will welcome suggestions from members of the Association as to activities it should undertake, itself, or should encourage, in relation to improving the teaching of economics.