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Becker's (1965) paper, ‘A Theory of the Allocation of Time’ revolutionised the modelling of household behaviour, by unifying Marshallian demand functions for goods with labour supply and related time use decisions within the household. In this article, we first summarise Becker's time allocation model and associated key contributions, then we show how his original framework extends to modern collective household models.

Is inequality largely the result of the Industrial Revolution? Or, were preindustrial incomes as unequal as they are today? For want of sufficient data, these questions have not yet been answered. This paper infers inequality for 30 pre-industrial societies using what are known as social tables, stretching from the Roman Empire 14 AD, to Byzantium in 1000, to England in 1688, to Nueva Espana around 1790, to China in 1880 and to British India in 1947. It applies two new concepts in making those assessments ‐ what we call the inequality possibility frontier and the inequality extraction ratio. Rather than simply offering measures of inequality, we compare its observed level with the maximum feasible inequality (or surplus) that could have been extracted by the elite. The results, especially when compared with modern poor countries, give new insights into the connection between inequality and economic development in the very long run.

At the same time, the composition of final goods may also differ across countries. Indeed, classical studies by Pyatt (1964) and Paroush (1965) examined priority patterns of final goods in Britain (using British Market Research Bureau Survey) and in Israel (using Labour Force Survey, Central Bureau of Statistics), respectively. Their results show, for instance, that the priority pattern in Israel is: cookers, refrigerators, and washing machines while that in Britain is: cookers, washing machines and then refrigerators, thus suggesting that the composition of varieties in a given year differs between the two countries even if they consume exactly the same number of varieties.

The twentieth century saw dramatic international shifts in scientific leadership. Despite these dramatic shifts Britain's position has been remarkably stable and strong. I study these changes using data on Nobel laureates in Chemistry, Medicine, and Physics. Raw data show a slight decline in British science, mainly in physics but once one accounts for the tremendous increase in the US, British science actually shows strong growth. I show that raw data and data that adjust for population and gross domestic product (per capita or total), consistently rank Britain as one of the top scientific performers.

The contributors to this Controversy section have supplied a rich smorgasbord of potential explanations for Britain's descent in Angus Maddison's rankings of real per capita incomes from second in I950 to tenth in I979. As with any good smorgasbord, there is too much to digest comfortably. On the table are inadequacies in the British system of education and training, financial shortsightedness, high tax rates, barriers to competition, the fragmented structure of industrial relations, under-investment in manufacturing plant and equipment, and the defensive nature of investment. The dilemma is deciding what to put on one's plate. Our four contributors provide little guidance on this score. To be sure, disputes over the relevance of some of the explanations are in the open: for example, where Crafts minimises the importance of U.K. investment in machinery and equipment on the grounds that the country's investment ratio was never significantly below the European median and that physical investment is not an important source of productivity externalities, other authors emphasise the inefficiency of investment (Eltis) and positive linkages from investment in the manufacturing sector to employment in the rest of the economy (Kitson and Michie). Generally speaking, however, we are provided little advice on how 'to weigh the different explanations and reconcile them with one another. It would have helped had the authors done three things: placed Britain's postwar relative decline in its historical context, provided more of an international comparative perspective, and distinguished proximate from fundamental determinants. No one would deny that the causes of Britain's relatively slow growth since I950 are historically rooted. Not that one gets this sense from the papers in this symposium! None makes more than passing reference to the legacy of the period before World War II. Fig. I shows for the century beginning in i 88o the extent to which the country's performance has lagged that which would be predicted by its relative standing in Maddison's league tables. For each year, per capita income in each of Maddison's i6 countries is regressed on its initial level (in I870, I9I9 or I946, as appropriate) and a constant term. The fitted values are then used to construct the predicted rate of growth from the base year to the current year. Fig. i shows the average annualised rate by which Britain's actual growth lags that predipted by the regression. The predominance of positive entries since I 950 confirms that British growth lagged that of the rest of the OECD since World War II even after controlling for initial position

Introduction - PART 1: HENRY BROUGHAM: LIFE AND ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTIONS - Life of Henry Brougham - Early Economic Works of Henry Brougham - Brougham's Later Economic Works - PART 2: WILLIAM ELLIS: LIFE AND ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTIONS - Life of William Ellis - Early Economic Works of Ellis - Ellis's Later Works - PART 3: THE POPULARIZING MOVEMENT AND EDUCATION - Economic Popularizers - The Condition of Schools - Classical Economists and Education - Henry Brougham as Economic Popularizer - William Ellis as Economic Popularizer - Conclusions - Appendix - Bibliography - Index

The view held by Keynes that there was a speculative appreciation of sterling prior to its return to the gold standard, has been challenged by Gregor Smith and Todd Smith, who argue that expectations of return must have weakened the currency. The authors demonstrate that the positive but decreasing trend displayed in the exchange rate data is consistent with a pattern of autoregressive convergence in fundamentals and that this continues to be true when there is a positive speculative element based on expectations of an early return. Hence, the key features of the data seem compatible with Keynes's views. Copyright 1994 by Royal Economic Society.

This paper considers the ways in which economics has been, and might be, applied to issues in business policy. Because the focus of industrial economics over the last century has used the industry, rather than the firm, as the principal unit of analysis, theoretical and empirical work has been of limited direct relevance to business problems. The last fifteen years, with developments in game theory, contract design, and principal agent problems, have changed this perspective. Over the next century, there is an opportunity to develop microeconomics as central to business policy as macroeconomics is to public policy. Copyright 1991 by Royal Economic Society.

This is a study of Irish-born Richard Cantillon, eighteenth century banker and economist whose Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General (1755), published twenty-one years after his death, remains a significant contribution to the development of monetary theory. Cantillon's life was an exciting story of involvement in high-level international banking, and speculation in foreign exchanges, commodities and stocks at the time of the South Sea Bubble. His death occurred in mysterious circumstances.

Developments in macroeconomic forecasting over the last twenty years are surveyed in this paper, which takes the I969 Presidential Address to the Royal Economic Society (Cairncross, I969) as its starting point. Sir Alec Cairncross had found no previous occasion on which the Royal Economic Society had discussed 'this new activity', and so selected economic forecasting as the topic for his address. As retiring Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury he had been preoccupied with forecasting for the preceding few years, and was well placed to reflect on the new kind of economic forecasting that was. emerging and the new ways in which it was being organised. At the time these were changing fast, with forecasting becoming in particular more heavily based on computable models. A conference in April I969 heard that in the Treasury 'a more elaborate fully formalised model is being programmed for a computer' (Roy, I970); in August I969, at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), an econometric model of the whole economy became an integral part of the quarterly forecasting exercises that had begun, with the publication of the National Institute Economic Review, in I 959. These developments followed the inauguration by the London Business School (LBS) in I966 of the first series of published forecasts based on the direct application of a complete statistical model of the economy. In the late I960s and early I970S confidence in forecasting was growing. 'Extra resources were put in, and there were hopes that the accumulation of data and more sophisticated techniques would lead to major improvements in accuracy of forecasts and understanding of the economy' (Burns, I986). This confidence rested in part on the wide acceptance of the neoclassical synthesis as a framework for macroeconomic analysis. The phrase originated with Samuelson, who was largely instrumental in constructing and promulgating the 'grand neoclassical synthesis', which was given considerable prominence in the third edition of his textbook. Here it was noted that economists, instead of being Keynesian or anti-Keynesian, 'have worked toward a synthesis of whatever is valuable in older economics and in modern theories of income determination. The result might be called neo-classical economics and is accepted in its broad outlines by all but about 5 per cent of extreme left wing

1. Keynesian economics after fifty years Nicholas Kaldor, James Tobin and A. P. Thirlwall 2. On Keynes and monetarism Allan H. Meltzer, F. H. Hahn and C. A. E. Goodhart 3. Keynes and the international economic order John Williamson, R. Dornbusch and Sidney Dell 4. Keynes and the management of real national income and expenditure Wynne Godley, E. Malinvaud and Robert M. Solow 5. What would Keynes have thought of rational expectations? Axel Leijonhufvud, Luigi L. Pasinetti and Paul A. Samuelson 6. The demand-side economic of inflation Tibor Scitovsky, A. J. Brown and J. Flemming 7. Memoirs of Maynard Keynes Sir Austin Robinson, Richard Braithwaite and James Meade.

First published in 1973, this book presents a systematic treatment of the conceptual framework as well as the practical problems of measurement of inequality. Alternative approaches are evaluated in terms of their philosophical assumptions, economic content, and statistical requirements. In a new introduction, Amartya Sen, jointly with James Foster, critically surveys the literature that followed the publication of this book, and also evaluates the main analytical issues in the appraisal of economic inequality and poverty.

This book deals with the history of private investment in India and its determinants during the period 1900-1939. It develops a simple theoretical framework in its first part and tries to isolate the influence on private investment in India of factor supplies, as against demand conditions. In the second part, all the major manufacturing industries of the period are studied in detail. Most of the analytical apparatus used is developed from orthodox economic theory, but a heavy emphasis is placed on Keynesian ideas. Finally, the author presents a case study in the economic relations between an imperial power (Britain) and a dependent colony (India). He also examines the social relations between the ruling race and the Indians, and provides one of the few detailed accounts of the mechanics of imperialism.

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Originally published in 1927, this book provides an analysis 'of the economic position of the small cultivator, particularly in contrast with that of the wage-labourer' based on a survey of small-scale farming in the Carmarthenshire area. At the time of publication numerous works had been written on the economics of large and small holdings, but most of these texts were lacking in comprehensive data. The aim of this study was collect in one place extensive and reliable data on the lives of smallholders, thereby giving an insight into their true economic position. A bibliography is included and notes are incorporated throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in smallholdings, British agriculture and the history of economics.