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The article describes the colonial monetary standard in Massachusetts in the 1600s. It discusses the establishment of a commodity standard in 1640 and the official prices of commodities in Massachusetts during the 1600s. The article details the development of the paper-money standard in 1690. It comments on the topics covered by most recent studies of the monetary system of the American colonies. The establishment of a mint in Boston in 1652 is reported. By 1737 the price of silver had risen. In 1750, the Massachusetts Assembly restored specie payments. The article also considers the objections to the continuation of paper-money issues.

Econometric model building of the type represented in the Duesenberry-Bosworth paper was at best an attempt to see whether systems of, say more than 25 equations, add much to our knowledge of the economy and the response to policy changes. They have not, I believe, at least to this point, and I am not optimistic about a change in the next few years, instead of commenting on the details of the particular models presented at this session, I will explain some of the reasoning that brings me to that conclusion. Before doing so, let me make clear that my comments are not directed at either "theory" or empirical science. There is very little of either in current econometric practice. I view my comments as a criticism of large models, models of twenty-five or more equations, not as a criticism of modelling or testing economic hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to identify an optimum set of monetary-fiscal policies to aid in economic adjustments to general and complete disarmament on a specified model. A solution is located by econometric analysis of the effects of changes in taxes and of government expenditures on GNP, employment, and the federal budget. The implications, potentialities, and limitations of surplus budgets, reduction of federal debt, and monetary expansion for disarmament adjustment are also explored. The obstacles to the adoption of the proposed policy are appraised, and a strategy for overcoming them is suggested, which would, incidentally, help to overcome structural obstacles and also conserve for the civilian economy some of the dynamic economic contributions of national defense. While much excellent work has been done on defense economics, there has been relatively little specific and technical discussion of disarmament economics, particularly of the bearing of fiscal and monetary theory upon it.However, the Program of Research on Economic Adjustments to Disarmament (READ) has now in press a report of two years of research on the problem, which will deal at some length with monetary-fiscal adjustments. This paper will serve as a preliminary report on a part of our findings, although obviously the particular conclusions I draw reflect only my own opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Renwick has presented an interesting and worthwhile overview of the portfolio problem. Observations on the divergence of thought and implementation with regard to the conceptualization and measurement of risk appear to be of particular value to theorist and practitioner alike. The paper is indeed meritorious in many additional respects, but there remain, at least in this observer's opinion, some rather serious deficiencies. It is to this latter set that the following comments are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article sheds light on commercial banking in the United States during the sixties. The article makes the conclusion that if the trends emerging in the late 1950s and in 1960 are not reversed by major changes in economic conditions or tax and regulatory policy, then the commercial banks will be unable to play as important a role in financing the 1960s as they have done in previous years. The article's conclusion is based on the expectation that in all years, except those of recession, bank deposits will continue to expand at a slower rate than the growth of the gross national product.

The subject under discussion is, to say the least, a peculiar one-or perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is a familiar subject that has been given a peculiar twist. At the beginning of his paper, Professor Johnson says, "the question has nothing to do with the optimal conduct of short-run stabilization policy. Instead it belongs to the pure theorists' world of continuous full employment of resources; as such, its policy relevance is to the framework of monetary organization and the long-run environmental objectives of monetary policy." However, this view of the problem can be traced to the context in which Milton Friedman took it up in his important paper on the subject. Viewed in a different light, the issue is of more immediate significance and does, as I shall show, have relevance for the conduct of short-run stabilization policy. The problem is that unless money yields a positive rate of return to holders of it, the quantity of real cash balances held will be less than the welfare-maximizing amount, and an inordinate amount of real resources will be employed in economizing the use of bank deposits and currency which cost virtually nothing to create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern macroeconomic theories are customarily classified as either neoclassical or Keynesian. Neoclassical theories are those that assume that most markets are in equilibrium most of the time; in particular, they generally assume that the labor market is always in equilibrium. Keynesian theories are those that assume that many markets are in disequilibrium much of the time; in addition to the labor market, they generally assume that financial markets and markets for capital goods are often in disequilibrium, in this paper, we will be interested in the extent to which a theory assumes that markets are in equilibrium, rather than in the intellectual tradition of the theory, so we will classify theories as "equilibrium theories" or "disequilibrium theories." We will be interested in dynamic theories, which describe the development of prices, stocks, and flows of goods and services over time, rather than in static theories, which describe the impact of events such as a one-time change in tastes, technology, or government policy. One of the purposes of this paper is to develop an aggregate model of the development over time of an economy that includes money and that is in continual equilibrium in the sense described above. Such a model would help in the analysis of the properties of a competitive monetary economy, and would be a logical starting point for the analysis of such phenomena as unemployment and changes in the rate of inflation. Since most Keynesian models of the economy do not pretend to be equilibrium models, let us turn to the neoclassical models of economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principle objective of our paper [5] was to present the theoretical concept of the Monetary Full Employment Interest Rate (MFEIR). We argued (and still believe) that this concept should be acceptable for use as an objective indicator of monetary policy by economists who believe that the Keynesian monetary mechanism is a valid description of reality. The presentation of estimates of the MFEIR was a secondary objective. As we stated, "[o]ur empirical results are presented more as an example of how this variable might be measured and used rather than as a definitive set of estimates of the monetary full employment interest rate during the 1952-1966 period." [5, p. 638]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In traditional IS-LM analysis monetary policy affects GNP through changes in the money supply (and the resulting impact on "the" rate of interest and investment spending). At the same time, monetary economists have increasingly concerned themselves with the composition of bank portfolios and bank portfolio behavior. The Federal Reserve, also, has paid particular attention to the loan portfolio of commercial banks in its assessment of monetary ease or tightness. The question to which this paper is addressed is, what is the relative importance of bank portfolio composition and the money supply in evaluating the impact of monetary policy? in particular, does the relative importance of these two financial variables vary with how one views the channels through which monetary policy operates? To point up the question even further one may ask, does it matter in evaluating the impact of monetary policy whether an expansion (contraction) in money supply occurs through the banking system's purchase (sale) of securities from (to) the public or whether it increases (decreases) loans? We shall ask also whether it is important to distinguish between different types of loans. Although the ultimate solution to these questions lies in empirical tests, this paper attempts only to clarify the issues with respect to the prevailing theories as to how monetary policy affects real spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In asking the question, "what can Europe do for itself?" in recovering and rebuilding after World War II, the article presents a conference paper that addresses information from the "General Report of the Committee of European Economic Cooperation." The author summarizes the European position into one: increase production. The author considers whether the goals outlined are attainable and what that will mean, discussing food, coal, electrical power, oil refinement, and steel production.

This paper undertakes to show that detrimental externalities tend to induce non-convexity of the social production possibility set. In particular we show that if externalities are sufficiently strong, convexity conditions must break down.
It is not our objective here to review in any detail the difficulties caused by non-convexity. Some of these consequences have long been recognized and are widely known.[2] However, until the recent appearance of papers by Starett [8], Portes [5], Kolm [3] and Baumol [2], it was apparently not recognized that externalities themselves are a source of non-convexity. These more recent writings suggest more than one connection between the two phenomena. However, one particularly straight-forward relationship seems to have received little or no attention. With sufficiently strong interactive effects non-convexity follows from the simple fact that if either of two mutually interfering activities is operated at zero level the other suffers no hindrance. The goal of this paper is to explore this phenomenon and show very dearly how it is that sufficiently severe detrimental externalities of the form described and non-convexity necessarily go together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents a list of papers and books about economic relations.

This article presents a critical analysis of the paper On the Relative Stability and Optimality of Consumption in Aggregative Growth Models by J. K. Sengupta. This paper concentrates on part (a) of the paper. It is argued here that Sengupta missed a fundamental point, that is, when the planning horizon is infinite, optimal paths for the Sengupta model do not always exist. Furthermore, when they do exist, there is an analogous situation to that of a static maximization problem with the solution on the boundary of the feasible set. It is well known that when the utility integral, as welfare criterion, does not converge, it does not really make sense to require that its value be maximized. Hence in what follows, an alternative model of consumption streams employing the Weizsä-cker-Atsumi (W-A) overtaking criterion is presented. It is contended that a path is W-A optimal if it overtakes all other feasible paths. Sengupta also refers in to the need of employing the overtaking criterion when the planning horizon is infinite, but he seems to expect that this supports his argument. Finally, parts (b) and (c) of Sengupta's paper will be commented on. These comments also refer to problems created by the assumption that the length of the planning period is infinite.

The article discusses economic policies of agencies of the Federal government of the United States. The use by the federal government of semi-autonomous corporations and agencies to accomplish certain quasi-commercial tasks has always been controversial. Many of the quasi-commercial and revenue-producing operations of government should be put in the hands of semi-independent, self-financing agencies and kept completely out of the unified Federal budget. This would reduce the size of the budget and, since the expenditures thus made extra-budgetary would very probably exceed the revenues similarly affected, it would also make for a budget surplus. Administratively, there seem to be some major drawbacks to the extra-budgetary idea in general and to the security issuing process in particular. Unfortunate effects on the government securities market may occur when issues are allowed to reach the market from several sources. When the extra-budgetary paper is sold to about the same group of investors as the regular Treasury issues, a certain element of competition could arise. Real financial independence for an agency of the Federal government seems unlikely.

The article presents a list of books and articles on economic relations. Some of the books and articles on world trade are "Industrial Growth and World Trade," by Alfred Maizels; "The Ohlin-Heckscher Theory of the Basis of Commodity Trade," by J.L. Ford, published in the September 1963 issue of "Economic Journal"; "World Trade Outlook," published in the October 1963 issue of "International Commerce." Some of the articles on regional economic groups include "America Gets an Unexpected Break," by Henry S. Reuss, published in the Fall 1963 issue of "The Atlantic Community Quarterly"; "A Canada-U.S. Free Trade Arrangement," by Sperry Lea; "U.S. Should Move Toward Common Market With U.K.," by I. Harold Kellar, published in the November 1963 issue of "Export Trade"; "International Manual on the European Economic Community," by Henry Junckerstorff. Some of the books and articles on economic development and aid are "The Wedding Income Gap," by Gunnar Myrdal, published in the September 1963 issue of "International Development Review"; "Economic Development: Past and Present," by Richard T. Gill.

Explicit recognition of uncertainty is one feature of much recent work in managerial accounting and, more generally, work in the areas of planning and control. This has led to an increased interest in the use of subjective probability assessments. Often overlooked, however, are the possibilities for subordinates to induce organizational suboptimization via their reported subjective probability assessments. We discussed two specific problems associated with reported subjective probability assessments: (1) dishonest assessments and (2) substantively deficient assessments. Two schemes for alleviating these problems -- the use of scoring rules and Bayesian model comparison procedures -- were then presented and discussed. The limitations and speed-of-effect of each scheme were considered, yielding some nonobvious implications. The organizational framework used throughout this paper incorporated some important features from the theory of teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ultimate objective of selective credit policies is to influence the composition of real investment, and not merely to influence financial markets. Although various forms of selective credit policies have been in use in the U.S.A. for many decades, there has been relatively little systematic investigation of the extent to which this ultimate objective can be realized. In this paper, we attempt to examine the theoretical and empirical justification for using selective credit policies; specify the structural conditions under which such policies might be expected to achieve their real objective; and look at the empirical evidence to determine whether or not these conditions are satisfied in one specific area where selective credit policies have been proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, therefore, I propose to reconsider the entire question of an optimal supply of money, starting with what might be regarded as contemporary wisdom and ending with what I hope may be regarded as wisdom of a slightly higher order. The question of monetary optimality, like most questions in welfare economics, is important not so much for its own sake as for the stimulus it has given to monetary theorists to re-examine the foundations and strengthen the superstructure of their subject. As of the present time, the optimality question has provoked more assertion than analysis, more confusion than enlightenment, and more controversy than agreement; but that is just what has long been needed to rescue monetary theory from the arid wastes of Post-Keynesian general equilibrium analysis. Perhaps we shall never have a definitive answer to the optimality problem, but we shall certainly have many attempts at it. And in the process we shall get what is most urgently needed: an improved theoretical understanding of the actual working of the economy in which we live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of books and papers about economic development and aid. The books and papers include "Development Planning," by Albert Waterston, C.J. Martin, August T. Schumacher and Fritz A. Steuber, "Unsolved Problems of International Development," published in "International Development," "Patterns of Economic Growth," "Developing Countries," published in "Realites," "What Do We Know About Planning," published in "International Development Review," and "Development Finance: Planning and Control," by Ursula K. Hicks.

Since 1955 the Board of Trade has collected annual data on the investment intentions for the following year of private manufacturing firms in the United Kingdom; and it has recently made these statistics generally available.[2] This paper investigates the determinants of these investment intentions in the manufacturing sector and evaluates their usefulness in forecasting actual investment compared with that of techniques not using anticipatory data.[3]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on immigration into Australia after the Second World War. Between 1947 and 1956, over one million immigrants arrived in Australia. This represents an average annual increase of about 1.1 per cent in the total population of the continent. With the exception of Israel, the rate at which these immigrants poured in was the highest of any country. Sustained immigration, plus the equally fast natural growth of about 1.3 per cent annually, should result in a total population of 10 million in about 1960. In 1946, similar to Great Britain's White Paper on full employment, the Commonwealth government of Australia issued its White Paper on Employment. This paper established high and stable employment as the principal objective of economic policy. The original immigration policy has hardly at all been considered in relation to the full employment goal of the Welfare State. In fact, economic motivation became prominent only after humanitarian and national defense reasons of the early post-war Operation Welcome more or less ran out.

SUMMARY Assumptions concerning the political behaviour of voters and politicians have first been made by A. D owns. Using these assumptions and considering several structural characteristics of democracy, the author of this paper attempts to develop some tendencies of economic policy. Since these tendencies are not only subject to the political but also to the economic situation of the country in question, additional assumptions upon the structure of economy have to be made. The present paper deals with a growing economy; it is assumed to work on a high level of diversification and consumption. Some sectors expand however only slowly, others even decline. Given these assumptions, the governmental economic policy will favour I. sectors with low rates of growth, and 2. sectors with low capital/ employment ratios. There exist, however, priorities about the measures to be taken: Import restriction is preferred to export promotion, export promotion to a policy of public buying and storing; even less estimated are public subsidies (provided costs of storing can be neglected and/or elasticities of demand and supply are low). The paper finally shows, how the tendencies of economic policy vary by changing political and economic structures of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Financing of Stabilization Policies: Evidence for the Canadian Economy. This paper examines the importance of including a government financing constraint in the derivation of monetary and fiscal policy multipliers for Canada. A fixed exchange rate model (eleven stochastic equations) is estimated, and dynamic multipliers are calculated for the period 1985-70. The results, which are explained through a series of sensitivity tests, show that only the monetary policy multipliers depend dramatically on the finance constraint. Several other changes in the model's structure are also examined. The importance of a direct liquid asset effect on consumption, and an estimated negative effect of expected inflation on investment are noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on Japan's entrance into the international financial community. A money economy although a primitive one, existed for several centuries before the post-1868 breakthrough into a modern economic society. Rice brokerage thus became an essential feature of this mixed economy--and here the merchants were in their glory, for by wielding the tremendous resources they had accumulated by catering to the needs of the free-spending upper classes they were able to profit from the wild speculative gyrations in the rice market, to the distress of the moneys income townspeople as prices went up and to the distress of the rice-income nobles and peasants as prices went down. Paper money came into wide circulation after the seventeenth century, when the daimyo, who were generally forbidden by the Shogunate to mint coins, began to resort to the printing presses to meet their expenses. Some issues had sound backing arid were accepted outside the territories of the issuing authorities, but the majority were issued recklessly and were thus practically worthless.

This section presents a list of reference sources dealing with management and international economic relations.

The article reports on the association between what an individual firm earns, the earnings of other firms in the same industry, and then the earnings of all the firms in the economy. There is a relationship between the earnings of a firm's stockholders with those of stockholders of other firms in the same industry and the returns of all stockholders. There was a study of 63 firms between June 1927 and December 1960 which showed that the common stock had half of its variance explained in the element of price change which affects the entire market.

The article focuses on the structure of the U.S. federal revenue system and the formation of the budget in accordance with national economic objectives. It is suggested that secular changes made to federal revenue modeling do not match the economic policy goals of the state and, that in its present form as of 1973, it is incapable of doing so. Alternative federal revenue management is presented to directly address economic goals through the budget process, taxation, and spending allocation policies.

This article attempts to resolve some of the issues related to the relationship between monetary policy and economic indicators. The author discusses how economists have different opinions on what the function of economic indicators are and on what constitutes easy or tight economic policy. The author explores some of the more popular opinions on these subjects and then presents his solution. The author suggests implementing the monetary full employment interest rate for use as a monetary policy indicator.

The authors discuss articles that focus on the discipline of the balance of payments as it may operate in Western Europe, Latin America and the United States. The authors explain that the balance-of-payments discipline does not arise from the actions and interactions of the economic processes themselves but rather from the ability of public policy to exercise greater or lesser self-restraint, depending on the trends of the balance of payments and the causes of the imbalance. It is suggested that the true meaning of the balance-of-payments discipline relates largely to the question of how far a country could or should deflate or inflate in order to maintain external balance at given exchange rates.

The article discusses the effect of monetary policies on the mortgage market. The author states that the post World War II real estate mortgage market became aware of the impact caused by monetary policies. The author discusses several different components of the real estate mortgage market including the government insurance market, the capital market, and conventional residential mortgage loans on commercial and industrial properties. The article also discusses characteristics of mortgage financing and presents a review of the impact of monetary policies on the mortgage market in 1958.

The article examines the administrative aspects of the treasury-central bank disagreement in the United States. The article presents a proposal for a single new executive department be created to take the place of the U.S. Treasury Department and of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The central benefit for the department would be that neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve would be subordinate, nor would either be independent. The article provides a background for the details of the proposal, and the nature of the problem is analyzed.

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 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]

The article offers information on the economic policy and philosophy of the Conservative Party in Great Britain. The economic philosophy of the Party was dominated by two largely contradictory themes on traditional conservatism and right-wing radicalism. The government has laid the foundation for strengthening the nationalized industries with the White Paper on economic and financial obligations.

The arguments for and against devaluation are usually based on speculation from theory or intuition, but rarely on statistical evaluations of past devaluations. The relatively frequent devaluations in many developing countries[2] stress the need and provide some data for such statistical analysis. But even where data exist for at least relatively simple regression analysis, conceptual issues concerning both dependent and independent variables complicate empirical work and confuse policy discussions. This paper discusses several such issues which arose in an empirical study of Israel, and the solutions adopted.
Section I considers what is the most suitable dependent variable. Sections II and III discuss explanatory variables--exchange rates and a growth factor, respectively. Conspicuous by its absence is a foreign demand variable: several attempts to introduce such a variable did not lead to significant results, mainly because of high serial correlation between foreign demand indicators and domestic growth indicators. It may also be argued that Israel's aggregated industrial exports--to which the empirical work refers--generally faced highly (if not infinitely) elastic demand curves. Thus, our main concern is with export supply functions. Some empirical results are presented in Section IV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to cast a light on some of the long-standing issues regarding the effectiveness and relative merits of alternative policies by simulation studies using an illustrative economic model. No econometric technique has been used to estimate model parameters. It is believed, however, that an empirical model may not be appropriate for studying the potential impact of certain policy variables since we have no guarantee that the econometrically estimated parameters will yield valid dynamic, closed-loop simulations. What is needed therefore is a new estimation technique that uses as its criterion of goodness-of-fit, "How well does the model simulate and predict?" rather than "How well does it fit historical data?". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article elaborates on how the theory of consumption plays a role in the Soviet Union's economic policy. It is not only a student of Soviet economics who is likely to find fascinating the rescue from official oblivion of E. Slutsky's famous paper of 1915 on the theory of the equilibrium of the consumer. The changing conditions of the Soviet economic environment have made it desirable, and the assimilation of input-output analysis has made it technically possible, to adopt the final bill of goods, rather than gross outputs as hitherto, as the starting-point in the construction of the plan. Thus consumption has come into the planner's focus. In picking up the Slutsky threads, Soviet economics has had to overcome some inhibiting factors deeply rooted in its traditions. Slutsky's stress on the ordinal properties of the utility function, and still more some post-Slutsky trends in the Western theory of consumption have also helped to bring it into agreement with the Soviet mode of thinking. To be more precise, the focus on the demand function, and ideas of the logical equivalence of the demand function and preference orderings, the gradual withering away of the classical contents of the utility concept, have helped to make the Slutsky approach compatible with the Soviet objectivist approach on which there is still a strong emphasis.

This paper is an attempt to apply to Australian statistics certain techniques of the National Bureau of Economic Research for detecting stages of the trade cycle. A major objective of this type of analysis is to reduce the time between a turning point and its identification. The results do not provide a mechanical procedure for interpreting movements in statistical series. This is true not only for current analysis but also when the techniques are applied in historical studies; they do not, for example, eliminate the difficulties of interpreting the period 1956-58. However, the task of subjective judgement is facilitated by the appropriate processing and classification of the statistics. The most highly developed of the National Bureau's techniques is the distinction between "leading", "coincident" and "lagging" series, according to the usual relationship between the cycles of specific series and the general business cycle. Another device is the diffusion index, a summary measure pertaining either to groups of economic series or to components of significant aggregates. Examples of both types of diffusion indexes, which show the percentage of components rising in any particular month, are given in this paper. Their logical justification is that they tend to move in advance of the general business cycle and therefore give advance warning of turning points. Other techniques devised by the National Bureau are not considered in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the relevance of input/output tables as a tool for economic analysis and planning in developing countries. It contends that this is so only to the extent that the input/output tables enable consistency of production accounts to be verified while providing a suitable basis for macro projections at the same time. As a by-product, such input/output tables, the paper adds, also provide a convenient framework for estimating the needs for extensions and improvements in basic statistics. All these requirements, it is stated, can be fulfilled by a relatively aggregated format of an input/output table—which some of the developing countries are in a position to compile. However, the paper states, it is feared that the case for input/output analysis is not based on these requirements. The main force of arguments is in fact based on the uses of input/output tables for more detailed sectoral analysis and projections. The current state of basic statistics on some key sectors, it is stated, is not sufficiently sound to yield an end-product which is reliable. In the case of sectors where this is so the input/output analysis is not relevant either because of concentration of production in a relatively few establishments or because of limited amount of inter-sectoral interaction. It is further felt that if such arguments were to be accepted by developing countries the result would be a distorted disposition of statistical resources. Immediate needs of the developing countries require concentration of effort in development of more reliable and relevant series on basic statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An underlying theme in this paper is that the differences in approach in this area arise partly from the complexity of the phenomena in the real world being studied, the implications of this interrelated complexity for unbiassed and efficient estimates of the structural relations, and the problems of getting an adequate number of observations of the required form. Two distinct approaches have been used in the study of marginal and total factor productivity. One approach is to use the factor shares in national income as weights to combine the individual factor inputs to make an index of total factor input, and to use a factor's relative share to measure its marginal contribution. The second approach is to estimate the production relation from the data being used, and derive the marginal contribution of the productive factors to output from the estimated relation. The longest parts of the paper review the procedures followed to cope with the main problems in the real world, and the strengths and limitations in the two approaches. The discussion emphasizes the issues for the economy as a whole, and touches only briefly on the issues in disaggregation. Three major themes are emphasized in the conclusions to the paper. One is that many of the problems, the differences in view, and the controversies grow out of the range of interrelated issues in practical applications. A second major theme is that most of the attempts to solve particular issues by those using the factor shares approach are rather similar to those followed by researchers estimating the production relations directly. A third theme is to encourage more studies that will look at the interconnections between production relations and income distribution, from the points of view of both economic theory (and its predictions about the relevance to concrete applications) and statistical estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to explore and quantify the difference between two measures of comparative economic welfare: (a) the more or less conventional measure of per capita national income, and (b) the capitalized value of expected future income per capita. The paper begins with a brief summary of the argument in favor of the present value of expected future income per capita as a measure of economic welfare. This is followed by an examination of the empirical relationship of the ratio of the suggested alternative measure to per capita income and an analysis of the variables used to compute the present value of expected income per capita. The main conclusion drawn from the calculations is that very substantial differences occur in the measurement of relative economic well-being depending on which measure is used. A final section discusses the implications of this finding for international comparisons of economic welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate the quarterly national income and product accounts of the United States (to be referred to henceforth as N.I.P.). The historical development of these accounts is reviewed first. Next, a summary of the statistical methodology underlying them is provided. An analysis of the errors to which they have been subject follows. An attempt is then made to define the area of their usefulness. Finally, suggestions for their improvement are formulated. The most general conclusions are as follows: 1. The quarterly N.I.P. estimates were developed in close response to an urgent need for them in economic analysis and policy formulation. Their development was a gradual process covering about two decades in which experience gained at one stage suggested improvements and extensions for the next. 2. The quarterly figures are based on abundant data sources. To be sure, the information is not as comprehensive as that available for the preparation of the annual estimates, but we are dealing only with differences in degree — there is no sharp contrast. 3. The series are subject to a considerable margin of error. There is bias in some of them — the initial estimates tend to be too low; and quite apart from bias they differ from the revised figures. 4. The margin of error attaching to the statistics disqualifies them from serving as precision instruments, but they are indispensable as a systematic framework for the order-of-magnitude analysis of the major forces determining the short-run movements of the economy. At present, the outstanding handicap in such analysis is not statistical error, but the inadequacy of economic theories and of our ability to test them. 5. The opportunities for mechanizing estimating techniques are assessed; the work on seasonals is discussed in this context; and a thorough investigation is proposed of the problems involved in the synchronization of the various components of the accounts. In... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Panama's dependence on imports and the backwardness of her predominantly agricultural population are not due primarily to lack of know-how, but rather to a complex of economic, political, and socio-psychological factors. Economic factors include orientation of the national economy toward the Canal and world commerce, and vested interests of importers and administrators. Political factors include a turbulent history and the exploitation of economic life by the party in power, resulting in faulty land distribution, diversion of government aid to political favorites, and uncertainty of the cattle market. Socio-psychological factors include a historic reluctance to make a living from farming-though it is an aristocratic hobby-reliance on outside forces rather than initiative, rural traditions of communal land ownership and working bees which hamper adjustment to a wage system. A growing economic nationalism encouraging agricultural self-sufficiency is counterbalanced by a "Let George do it" attitude. An easy satisfaction with grand and highly publicized plans on paper also retards development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on some aspects of industrialization and the convergence of contemporary Japan. Thus, this paper examines some of the aspects of change in Japan since the end of the Pacific War, specifically; changes associated with the ways men are managed in the modern sector of the Japanese economy. More recently, some writers have developed the relationship between technology and change. Their examination of the problems of labor and management in economic growth is rooted in the relatively common effects of common technologies in all developing economies. They emerge with a "convergence hypothesis" which argues that almost everywhere the world is in the grip of industrialization. This study takes technology as central in industrialization. Japan remains the only nonwestern nation which can be said to be industrialized. The streets of Japan's major cities are almost as choked with motor traffic as any American city of comparable size. Television antennas obstruct and mar the beauty of Japanese architecture. Yet, by no means can it be said that Japan is a western nation since many vestiges of pre-industrial Japan are readily apparent. Japanese tend to view themselves and their institutions as unique, a view that appears to be shared by many western scholars.