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This paper argues that there are no insuperable obstacles to making quantitative science-aided comparisons of the welfare effects of economic policies on different people. This contradicts the belief commonly held by economists that in principle meaningful interpersonal utility comparisons cannot be made.
The paper is intended as a contribution to the theory of governmental decision-making with respect to social redistribution problems. Examples of such problems include a) taxation and welfare transfers, i.e., who among the citizens should retain which portions of the national product; and b) population policy, i.e., how many people should be allowed to become claimants to the national wealth. The paper is not intended to cast any light whatsoever on positive consumer choice theory or the psychological study of decision-making. The approach described here is generally consistent with the recent discussion of 'social indicators'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents three methods for mapping levels of economic development and applies each to the case of India. First, to provide a substantive addition to knowledge about the economic geography of India; second, to demonstrate that even within nations generally recognized simply as "underdeveloped" one can meaningfully map differential sub-levels of development; and third, to stimulate critical discussion of the various methods by which maps of economic development can be made. The chief statistical problem is how best to combine the several series of individual indices into a single set of areal ratings.

The article highlights the concept of political economy coined by well-known socio-economist Horace Greeley. Historians of economic thought, in customarily appointing Henry C. Carey dean of the American School, have generally neglected the high spokesman of discontent, Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the "New York Tribune." Horace Greeley's life and political economy stand out as clearer expressions of a young America in its middle period transition. Greeley was an awakened figure of his time. Never the totally eccentric dreamer he is frequently considered, he found himself aware that narrow parochialisms were breaking up, and he aimed to conform society to the changes under way. He saw his country as the great chance for righting wrongs- and he wished to make it a proving ground for social experimentation. Thus, he devoted his life and his paper to teaching the people to seek freedom by building a wealthy nation in which resources should be correctly utilized and special privileges should be destroyed.

The article informs that the American political tradition and the antitrust laws make competitive free enterprise both a norm in practice and an ideal of national policy. Those who favor this policy do so on various grounds. They believe that rivalry among competing sellers will lead to improvement of product and reduced prices. The downward pressure on selling prices will also compel a striving for increased efficiency and reduced costs. It is the purpose of this paper to review the work of these administrative agencies and the courts in formulating national economic policy in this area. The central and recurrent problem will be the relative weight to be accorded to the policy of maintaining competition in an industry which by hypothesis is to be governed by competition only to a limited extent.

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge about the effects of industrialization upon systems of social stratification. Taking societies as the unit of observation, we consider the relationships between level of industrialization and (I) the distribution of status characteristics in the population (the structure of stratification) ; (2) the pattern of interrelations among status characteristics (the process of stratification); and (3) the form of linkages between status characteristics and other aspects of social behavior (the consequences of stratification). A set of propositions is specified, a few of which are empirically well established but most of which yet require empirical testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents response of the author on comments made by Lewis E. Hill on the papers "Toward a Reconciliation of Institutional Economics and Its Critics" and "Beyond the Market Economy Building Institutions That Work," by Clarence E. Ayres that were published in the March 1970 issue of the periodical "Social Science Quarterly." Under appropriate arrangements for doing things, that is, under an appropriate institutional structure, the propensity to truck and barter naturally entails the creation of markets, which are themselves arrangements for effecting exchange. In the U.S., the institutional structure is such that markets permeate most of the economy. For example, in August 1970, nearly 84 per cent of total civilian employment was in the private sector, all of which consists of regulated and more or less unregulated markets. Thus, employing scholar Robert L. Heilbroner's system of classification, the economy of the U.S. would be appropriately designated as essentially a market system, as the author did in his introduction to Ayres' classic. "Institutionalism and Economic Development." But Ayres objects to him, that the U.S. economy is an industrial economy. Unfortunately, his is not intended to be a cross-classification, which, if correct, would be a suitable complement rather than a substitute for the one that the author employed, since Ayres says prefatorily, and the author flatly denies that the U.S. economy is a market economy.

The article presents information on the books, "Curtailment of Non-Defense Expenditures," by Henry P. Seidemann and "Correction Please!" By a series of logical and convincing arguments, Seidemann contends that by decreasing non-defense expenditures it is possible to further the war effort through better utilization of manpower, finance and material. The alternatives confronting the nation are either to proceed without concern over the mounting public indebtedness or to strive to limit its growth without impairing essential governmental functions with the object of stabilizing the economic life of the nation. The author's suggested reductions of expenditures in: flood control, rivers and harbors, other water projects, agriculture, public domain, public welfare, highway development and executive and other general activities together with the transfer of certain costs to state and local governments would effect a reduction of more than two billion dollars in federal expenditures for non-defense purposes. "Correction Please!" is a loose-leafed visible-indexed collection of papers directed to the intelligent elite whose responsibility it is to so redesign the social system that the inborn nature of the philistine will guide him to behave better.

The article presents response of the author on comments made by Lewis E. Hill on the papers "Toward a Reconciliation of Institutional Economics and Its Critics" by Coldwell Daniel and "Beyond the Market Economy Building Institutions That Work" that were published in the March 1970 issue of the periodical "Social Science Quarterly." Hill's Comment on the exchange between Daniel and the author is perfectly right in pointing out that he gave no reasons for insisting that theirs is an industrial economy rather than a market economy, as Daniel has declared. If it is not too late, the author would like to repair that omission. In various important senses theirs is of course a market economy. Obviously buying and selling go on almost everywhere and almost all the time; and scholar Karl Polanyi was quite right in pointing out that ours is the only economy in history in which buying and selling have been as general and as significant as they are today throughout the Western world--or at least throughout the free world. The question is: significant of what? Many writers have maintained that freedom to buy and sell is the quintessence of freedom, and that people who do not enjoy this freedom are not free. This may be true. But it is not the whole story. In particular it is not the whole story of economic development. Such freedom --the market may have been a necessary condition but not the determinant of the modern Western economy.