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The article discusses the pre-war undervaluation of price control by economists as the instrument of emergency policy in the U.S. The issuance of the General Maximum Price Regulation (GMPR) was an act of desperation which is by all odds the most important single step in war-time price policy. A Statement of Considerations that accompanied the GMPR states that there can be no effective price control while at the same time there is a large amount of power to purchase. The passage of the Price Control Act in 1942 was believed by the Congress and the Country to insure reasonably stable prices.

The article focuses on the quantitative position of marketing in the United States. With the data which are available, two approaches to a measurement of the comparative magnitude or ranking of commodity marketing among the economic activities of the United States appear feasible. The first approach is by means of an estimate of the total cost or total value added by marketing activity, paralleling in principle the well-known Census estimate of value added by manufacturing processes. The second approach is through an estimate of the total number of people employed in marketing in comparison with all gainfully employed and with the number of people employed in other economic activities. An estimate has been made for 1930 of the total cost of marketing or total value added by marketing, in comparison with manufacturing. An effort has likewise been made to arrive at the total employment in marketing in that year and the trend in marketing employment over the last twenty years, and then to compare these with parallel estimates for other lines of economic activity.

The article focuses on policies and operations of price control. It should be possible to draw from the experience of two years of price administration some lessons for price theory and price management, which will be of permanent value to the economist. But to do this, there must be opportunity for reflection. The Office of Price Administration will be a rich source of information and experience on the price economy for a generation to come. It is that fruitful price analysis must emphasize the differentiation between types of market situations rather than features common to markets as a whole. The author believes that the impressive depth of differences between markets and the limited character of the residual of generalization applicable to markets as a whole have even yet been insufficiently stressed. The practical impact of these differences in market organization on the administration of prices has been very great indeed. Price control in the perfectly competitive market is a matter of classic difficulty. Price control in the imperfectly competitive market is, by comparison, at least, a simple matter.

With the establishment of a permanent system of production credits in 1933, the American farmer was provided with a publicly sponsored institution to meet each of his credit needs. Although the legislation establishing the earlier agencies was controversial and attracted general notice, that setting up the production credit system received comparatively little attention. This paper describes briefly the structure of the system and outlines the scale of loaning operations to date. At the end of 1934 it seems probable that the system had approximately one-tenth as many loans outstanding for agricultural purposes as did the commercial banks. The competitive position of the system, particularly in relation to country banks, is discussed in some detail. Attention is also given to the perplexing problem which the system faces in its efforts to maintain a uniform loan rate for all parts of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the U.S. farm policy. In the years after World War II, it seems clear that the farm policy of providing firm price guarantees for farm products has gained political flavor. It was assumed that this policy would be discontinued as soon as the peacetime conditions exist in the U.S. Now after the period of five years, the policy is no longer viewed as temporary. During the presidential campaign of 1952 both political candidates committed themselves, to price support the extension of protection to products that was not covered in farm policy. The growing popularity of the policy has been the position of economists who have spoken on this subject. It was found that the present policy incorporates a design for acquiring large government stocks but none for their management and disposal. It benefits least the income of those farmers who receive least. A proposal concerning the remarkable divergence between scientific prescription and practical farm policy was examined and the standards that were tolerable were derived through it.

The article examines a disequilibrium system for mobilizing economic resources in the U.S. Under this system the incentives and compulsions of an unplanned economy were supplemented or supplanted by three new forces for determining economic behavior. These were: (1) a more or less comprehensive system of direct control over the employment of economic resources; (2) a nearly universal control over prices, and (3) an aggregate of money demand substantially in excess of the available supply of goods and services. The role of direct controls in the system can be readily established. For regulating the use of resources, the available choice is between the income incentives and compulsions of the market, and authority. Price control, that is, general price control, was rejected because it was believed to be unworkable--it was felt that it would quickly succumb to the underlying disequilibrium that suggested its use. The Disequilibrium System in the U.S. was the fortuitous progeny of two miscalculations. The first miscalculation was a great overestimate of the technical efficiency of controls over income and of their political feasibility. The second and offsetting error was an equally great underestimate of the efficiency of price control.