PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

This article presents information on several papers and studies, which deal with the economic history of Great Britain. Two studies of general interest concern secular trends in the late medieval economy. The concept of the thirteenth century as a period of boom forms the target for a lively onslaught by E. Miller, "The English Economy in the Thirteenth Century: Implications of Recent Research" in the periodical "Past and Present." For all the signs of expansion, he argues, thirteenth-century England did not enjoy a growth economy in the technical sense. People increased more rapidly than the capacity to produce, and society faced a progressive crisis, in which average production per head was falling. Yet this does not permit us to go to the opposite extreme and make the period after 1350 an epoch of economic growth. Another paper discussed is "Monetary Movements and Market Structure: Forces for contraction in Fourteenth-and Fifteenth-Century England" by H.A. Miskimin that was published in a previous issue of the periodical "Journal of Economic History." In a discussion in fact confined to the fourteenth century, Miskimin attempts to reconcile the demographic and monetary theories of recession. Population changes caused a secular shift in demand, altering market structure and prices.