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In the recent article "The Cyclical Turning Points in an Open Economy: Canada, 1927-1939," published in September 1953 issue of the journal "American Economic Review," author Edward Marcus has argued that in both 1929 and 1937 the Canadian downturn preceded the downturn in Canada's two principal markets, Great Britain and the U.S. In both years he attributes this to: a deflationary influence arising out of two of Canada's important export industries, wheat and pulp and paper. The author argues that he cannot agree. In his view, the downturn in 1937 came later in Canada than in the United States and in 1929 there is no clear evidence of either a lead or a lag. Furthermore, he doesn't believe that either wheat or pulp and paper exerted an important deflationary influence prior to the U.S. downturn in these two years. As evidence of the early downturn in 1929 Marcus cites first the decline in bank debits in the second quarter of 1929 below their level in the same quarter of 1928. He fails to mention their substantial recovery later in the year. His statement that newsprint exports were below their level of the previous year is wrong. Canadian exports of newsprint exceeded their level for 1928 in every month in 1929 except February.

In 1963 economists Milton Friedman and David Meiselman published a paper for the Commission on "Money and Credit," in which they attempt to test the relative predictive power of Keynesian and monetary theories of business fluctuations. Their methods and conclusions were sharply disputed in papers by scholars Donald Hester, Albert Ando and Franco Modigliani, and Michael DePrano and Thomas Mayer. The purpose is to review this controversy. The method is the simple one of first replicating the studies over the original sample periods and then examining the postsample performance of the competing equations. On a sociological level there can be little doubt that this controversy was and continues to be, enormously valuable. Many economists have been stimulated to work on the questions disputed by the monetarist and Keynesian combatants and it is probably correct to argue that two models of the U.S. economy are a direct outgrowth of the controversy. What has been missing from this continuing controversy, however, is an ex post evaluation of the earlier empirical work.

There has been an ever-growing stream of books, pamphlets and articles on how to achieve and maintain employment, as of September 1944. It has become quite impossible for economists to read all these recipes, mainly because they all say more or less the same thing. They nearly all agree that the way to keep up the level of national employment is to keep up the level of national expenditure. In one way and another, national expenditure was permitted to increase in a number of countries, and some measure of recovery was achieved in the process. The reason for the recovery was not always understood, it was attributed to cheap money, an unbalanced budget, raising of tariffs, devaluation of the currency, increasing the general price level and so on, by the countries adopting these various measures. It was not realized that it was only in so far as the measures taken involved an increase in the total volume of spending in the country concerned that they could raise its level of employment at all and that in itself a rise in prices, far from promoting recovery, diminished the effect in stimulating employment of a given increase in spending. The article talks about the recent British government report on employment policy. There is nothing particularly novel about any of the measures recommended in the policy, nor do they involve any revolutionary change in economic practice or organization. What is new is, first, that the government there accept as one of their primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment and second, that the various measures proposed are commended as part of a single coherent plan.

Part I of this paper discusses briefly the methods used in the calculation of the variance--co-variance matrix and correlation coefficients and the nature and sources of the data. In Part II we present an analysis of correlation among pairs of domestic and foreign assets over different lengths of holding periods. Part III contains an analysis of correlation among pairs of domestic and foreign identical industries. The paper closes with the presentation of the influence exchange rate variations have on the stability of earnings from foreign assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a comment on the article "The Strange Journey of Monetary Indicators." The author discusses the role that monetary policy plays as well as the role of policy makers. The author believes that if one follows the logic set forth in the paper someone might draw the conclusion that policy makers serve a limited purpose and that economic indicators, if closely watched, provide all the necessary information to understand how an economy is functioning. The author defends the role that policy makers play and notes that they have a significant impact in terms of promoting measures aimed at economic stabilization.

This article presents comments on papers by economists Frank de Leeuw and Hyman P. Minsky. De Leeuw's paper is a very impressive one. He not only displays a mastery of monetary theory and statistical technique but also shows considerable artistry in the construction of his model. He has managed to include in his model the main institutional features of the complex financial system of the U.S., while keeping the scale of his model down to manageable proportions. Anyone who has tried his hand at realistic financial analysis will realize that is in itself a considerable achievement. Minsky's paper is an equally interesting one, though entirely different both in style and content. He argues that the ratio of debt to income tends to rise progressively during a long period of prosperity interrupted only by minor recessions. The increase in debt ratios may operate as a drag on the rate of investment and slow down or bring to a halt the growth of demand. Of course, the system may simply move toward an equilibrium debt income ratio and continue to grow to scale. The effects of debt on the system are analogous to those of accumulating capital in simple capital-stock-adjustment models.

This article presents the author's views regarding the critique by professor Clarence L. Barber on his article "The Cyclical Turning Points in an Open Economy: Canada, 1927-1939." The author argues that much of the disagreement between him and Barber and arises from differing treatment of the basic statistics. Barber has worked from seasonally corrected data, whereas the author has preferred the original series. In addition, in some of his citations Barber seems to prefer annual averages, whereas the author has stressed the monthly details. Barber is also unconvinced that the declining prices in the pulp and paper industry could have been significant, particularly since the value of production and exports continued to increase. However, following the 1928 newsprint price war the Canadian index of the prices of securities of paper companies dropped from 160.0 to 97.1, while the entire index of Canadian stock prices rose from 177.0 to 227.3. The price drop put pressure on profit margins, and led to widespread bankruptcies in the industry after 1929.

The article focuses on the development of the concept of "automatic stabilizers." The purpose of this financial research paper is to extensively evaluate the research dealing with the alleged automatic stabilizers with the precise hope of tracing the history and origin of this economic concept. Also included will be a brief definitional analysis and some concluding statements on suggested improvements in the stabilizers that still exist. Additional stabilizers will also be proposed in this article.

The article discusses the abstracts of several papers on economics published in the November 1965 issue of the "Journal of Industrial Economics." The first paper of the journal "Some Principles of Forecasting in Business," by Colin Robinson, is concerned with the way in which business forecasting should be approached rather than with particular forecasting techniques. The second paper "National Shipping Policies," by S.G. Sturmey, examines the aims, which may be pursued by shipping policies, and the methods adopted to secure those aims. The third article of the journal is "The Basis of Some Recent Advances in the Theory of Management of the Firm," by Armen A. Alchian. The fourth paper "Costs and Prices in the Northern Ireland Construction Industry 1954-64," by M.C. Fleming, describes the derivation of an index of output prices for the Northern Ireland construction industry and provides figures for changes in the costs of labor and materials. The fifth article of the journal "Linear Programming for Production Planning," by C. van de Panne, explains linear programming by means of an example of a company having to decide to which products it should allocate its limited production capacity.

This section presents abstracts of studies on economics which were published in the July- September 1964 issue of The Indian Economic Journal. The paper titled Economic Development, Terms of Trade and Tax Policy, by Gianni G. Zandano, deals with the effects of economic expansion on the terms of trade with particular reference to underdeveloped countries. The paper titled Monetary and Credit Policy in the Framework of an Economic Plan with Special Reference to the Short-Term Aspects, by S. L. N. Simha, looks at the economic and financial situation prevailing in Latin America. The paper titled Behaviourism and the Theory of the Firm, S. B. Prasad, shows that variations in the theory of economic organization center primarily around the so-called principle of profit maximization.

This article introduces several articles published in the September 1974 issue of the periodical "Brookings Papers on Economic Activity." The four principal articles and the report appearing in this issue were presented at the fifteenth conference of the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity held in Washington on December 5-6, 1974. One of the papers deals with the role of the dollar in the world economy, one with the fundamental nature of the labor market in the United States, and three with different aspects of the economy's cyclical performance: the viability of thrift institutions during periods of tight money, the cyclical behavior of productivity in manufacturing, and the impact of recession on different groups in the labor market. In the first article of this issue, Marina Whitman examines the past, present, and future roles of the U.S. dollar in the world monetary system. Under the Bretton Woods system that operated for a generation prior to 1971, the dollar was different from all other currencies in several respects. First, it served as the major world "vehicle" currency and was used by private parties abroad even in many international transactions that involved no American resident. Second, it was linked to gold by the U.S. obligation to buy and sell gold for monetary purposes at a fixed price. In contrast, other countries maintained the par value of their currencies by buying and selling foreign exchange, generally using dollars for those transactions (or "interventions"). Thus, the dollar was the intervention currency. Furthermore, it was the yardstick by which the International Monetary Fund defined the value of other currencies. It was also the major reserve currency; most of the growth of official international reserves came from the acquisition of dollars by central banks.

This article is a sequel to an earlier study of postwar U.S. financial behavior. The earlier study presented a nineteen-equation quarterly model of supplies and demands in major financial markets. It included detailed discussion of individual supply and demand relationships, but it did not deal with the properties of the model as a whole. The present paper explores the properties of the complete model by means of a series of simulation runs. The article is in three parts following introduction. The first part is a brief and necessarily incomplete summary of the model. The second is the core of the article, a description of the simulation runs and an attempt to account for the principal results in terms of the relevant properties of the underlying equations. The final part contains a brief summary and some remarks on the uses of the simulation results. The simulations which have been discussed suggest a number of propositions about financial markets. these propositions are not intended as realistic predictions of how financial markets behave. They are a set of hypotheses about financial market behavior suggested by the underlying, exploratory model and abstracting from the effects of financial markets on markets for real goods and services.

The article presents a discussion related to business cycle written by Milton Gilbert and a reference to the paper written on the same topic by Jacques J. Polak and Rudolf R. Rhomberg. Europe has had only two recessions since the war, one in 1952 and one in 1958, contrasted with the four that the U.S. has had. The 1952 recession was due mainly to restraints exercised by the policy-making authorities for the purpose of correcting balance-of-payments difficulties, although the reaction from the Korean boom was also a factor, it was secondary. The 1958 recession was also due to policy restraints exerted during the three years from 1955 to 1957. These restraints were applied mostly to correct excess demand, overfull employment, and inflationary pressures, although balance-of-payments difficulties were a factor in some or most cases. Thus the only recessions resulted from policy measures, taken deliberately. The recessions also were ended by policy management. Restraints were relaxed when the authorities considered that expansion could be safely resumed. And it did resume.

So much has been written on the theory of interest rates and their influence; yet so indecisive have been the available facts. As usual, theories are more abundant as the facts are few. It has been assumed, for example, that the 60 or 90 day rate on commercial paper is the typical interest rate and that its gyrations are characteristic of interest rates generally. As a matter of fact, this rate applies probably to scarcely 1 per cent of the total amount of money loaned in one form or another in the United States. The questions here to be considered are: what are the typical and dominant interest rates of the country; how much do they vary; and how much influence has this variation on the changes in the trade cycle? The discount rate of the Federal Reserve banks, applying to a sum which in recent years has varied as widely as from nearly 3 billions to less than 200 millions; range of rate within this period, 3 to 7 per cent. There is the large volume of current and casual credit extended by manufacturers, jobbers, retailers and dealers of all sorts to their customers.

The new book, "Stabilizing the Dollar," brings under one cover much of the material the author has presented in numerous papers and develops the argument for his plan in such persuasive form that the reader can hardly escape regretting his inability to be converted. The writer desires to call attention briefly to the phase indicated in the title of this paper, i.e., the probability that if the author's plan were in operation the periods when prices are falling would be marked by sharp drops in money values that would be disastrous to many lines of business and would increase the distress that goes along with depressions in the recurring business cycles. Business mortality would rise, failures multiply and opportunities for mitigating disaster by spreading the losses over the community would lessen. The level might not rise as high as in the case of unstabilized prices, hence the distance of the fall might be shorter but the descent would be more abrupt, less subject to control. The process of credit inflation in connection with war finance has been made familiar in discussions too many to mention. The government received credit on the books of the banks in exchange for certificates of indebtedness.

The article presents the abstracts of several papers on economics published in the October 1965 issue of the journal "Zeitschrift Für Die Gesamte Staatswissenschaft." The first paper of the journal "The Problem of Middle Europe, 1840-1940," by W.O. Henderson, discusses the possibility of extending German economic and political influence in central Europe. The second paper of the journal is "General Economic Theory and Spatial Economic Relations," by E.V. Böventer. Confronting the terms general economic theory and spatial economic relations the author examines the tools that have been developed for the analysis of a spaceless economy in the light of their capability to analyze problems of a space-economy. The third paper "Optimum Economic Policy for Stabilization With a Quadratic Criterion Function," by J.K. Sengupta, analyzes the nature and implications of instability generated by the so-called shock variables. The question of an appropriate stabilization policy emphasizing the two-fold objectives of stability and optimality is also discussed in relation to the Hicksian non-linear trade cycle model extended to include government expenditure as an additional variable.

The article discusses a number of marketing research techniques used in forecasting the sales of consumer durable goods. According to the author, sales forecasting is important because it can point out possible future economic downturns. The author presents a number of steps in the process of creating an effective sales forecast. These steps include the plotting of past business trends on graph paper and scattergrams, calculating the firm's industry sales figures for past years and preparing forecasts by product lines.

The article discusses the marketing of newspapers. According to the author, publishers of newspapers sell their products in a mass market at a reduced price that does not cover the costs of production. Publishers depend on advertising to cover production costs and to make a profit. The author notes that cyclical patterns in both the advertising and circulation of newspapers can be observed between World War I and World War II. Also discussed is the effect of other media, including television and picture magazines, on newspaper circulation.

The article discusses advertising in relation to the business cycle. The author notes his intention to examine the relationships between the advertising expenditures, sales and profits of companies. According to the author, the periodical "Printers' Ink," an index of advertising, is an effective measure of fluctuations in newspaper, farm paper, magazine and radio advertising. The author discusses seasonal variations in advertising, attributing changes to an increase in federal corporation taxes.

Publication in 1955 by the Federal Reserve of a national system of annual flow of funds accounts provided a much needed framework for study of interrelations between transactions in financial instruments and transactions in goods and services. In 1959 these accounts were published on a quarterly basis and in 1962 on a seasonally adjusted quarterly basis. Since large intra-year movements are not uncommon in financial flows, elimination of seasonal influences makes for much closer correspondence of financial data to the principal measures of economic activity. It is now possible, for the first time, to systematically analyze recent cyclical patterns in the volume and direction of financial flows. The figures summarized in this paper deal only with changes in the direction and volume of financial (as opposed to non-financial) flows, and cover only the three most recent business cycles--1953-1957, 1957-1960 and 1960-1962. As such, they have possible significance for areas of macro-analysis which recently have been receiving particular attention: the adjustment of various sectors of the economy toward desired positions of net worth, forms of assets held, and volume and types of liabilities assumed; shifts in the origin of pressures and sources of ease in financial markets over the business cycle; and therefore changing financial pressures in the form of interest rate movements as business conditions advance and recede. The purpose here is to see if there is some cyclical regularity with respect to financial assets acquired, assumption of liabilities, and net contribution to or drawing on financial markets by the major sectors of the economy. The relation between changes in financial and non-financial transactions, however, is not examined. In this sense, then, the following material is only a fragment of business cycle analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One unusual characteristic of the so-called 1958 recession was the continued rise in prices in the presence of declining output and employment. In this article the author discusses the possibility that inflation has been institutionalized in the economy as the result of structural developments in both labor and product markets. Consequently, within limits, the classic remedies for inflation may be inadequate, since they assume market characteristics and responses which are no longer relevant in many sectors of the economy. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the April 1958 meeting of the Midwest Economics Association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents some abstracts of published materials concerning business fluctuations. The paper entitled "The Role of Macro-Economic Models in Short-Term Forecasting," by C.E.V. Leser discusses the construction of econometric models and their application to short-term forecasting is usually based on two assumptions. The purpose of the abstract entitled "The Timing of Economic Fluctuations in Australia: January 1948 to December 1964," by A.M.C. Waterman is to expose the anatomy of the trendcycle to a more minute examination. In addition to the conventional maxima and minima, six other reference points are defined such as peak and trough of trend-free series, peak and trough of growth-rate curve and up- and down-cross of trend cycle on trend. The purpose of another paper entitled "An Expectations Model of Cyclical Growth: Hicks on the Trade Cycle Revisited," by R.N. Waud to construct a model which accommodates many of the criticisms of Hicks' model of the trade cycle expressed by author N. Kaldor.

The article discusses the abstracts of several papers on economics published in the August 1965 issue of the journal "Bulletin of Economics and Statistics." The first article is "The Territorial Incidence of the East African Common Services," by Arthur Hazlewood. It attempts to assess the balance of benefits of various common services for each of the three East African countries. The second article "Is Britain's Worsening Trade Gap Due to Bad Management of the Business Cycle?" by P.M. Oppenheimer, refutes the view that Britain's trade gap has gotten bigger over the past decade because of the increased speed of successive cyclical upswings. The third article "The Genesis of Bank Deposits: New English Version," by R.L. Crouch, elucidates the process whereby surplus reserves are eliminated by the banks and also specifies the forces generating surplus reserves within the banking system. The third article "Soviet Living Standards," by P. Hanson, compares Soviet and British living standards in 1964 and 1965.

The article discusses the abstracts of several papers on economics published in the December 1965 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The first abstract "The U.S. Downturn of 1948," by Rendigs Fels, develops a simple mathematical model that puts into rigorous form a tailor-made explanation of the upper turning of the business cycle in the U.S.A. of November 1948. The second article of the journal is "Economic Discrimination and Unemployment," by Harry J. Gilman. Unemployment rates for all workers, and for males and females separately, are higher for non-whites than for whites. This has been true for at least the last three decades, though the differentials have increased over time. The third article "Firm Size, Market Structure, Opportunity, and The Output of Patented Inventions," by F.M. Scherer, which reports on statistical tests of several hypotheses concerning the determinants of industrial activity, as measured by invention patents received in 1959 and research and development personnel employed in 1955 by 448 relatively large firms.

Presents a paper that attempts to provide a fairly complete analysis of the performance of the existing composite index of leading indicators as a predictor of the major swings in economic activity in the period since the Second World War. Identification of the twelve variables that form the composite index of leading indicators (CLI) and presents a view of the rationale for constructing the CLI; Indication of how spectral analysis might be used to form a new leading indicator that overcomes some of the difficulties revealed in the current CLI, and the evaluation of two variants of such an indicator; Conclusions and suggestions for further work.

Introduces a series of articles which deals with economic activity.

The paper examines the determinants of short-run fluctuations in residential construction during the 1946-59 period. The paper explains how the short cycles are measured and describes some of their characteristics. It considers the relationship between fluctuations in residential construction and changes in the supply of mortgage credit. Many observers have noted that residential construction appears to be quite sensitive to credit conditions in the short run but little evidence for this relationship has yet been produced. The analysis is broadened to show the relationship between fluctuations in residential construction and in aggregate economic activity. Again, it has been widely noted that residential construction has had a generally stabilizing or counter-cyclical influence on the economy but no very adequate or complete explanation of this tendency has been provided. The procedure used to identify "cycles" in residential construction activity is similar to that used by the National Bureau of Economic Research, except in one respect. search, except in one respect. Cycles in residential construction are defined in terms of movements in three related series rather than only one, a movement is not recognized as "real" unless it is found in each of the series.

This article presents a discussion on the research paper "The 1957-58 Business Contraction: New Model or Old?" in the context of U.S. economy, by Geoffrey H. Moore from U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research, published in the May 1959 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." Moore has placed the recession in historic perspective relative to its duration and intensity. He finds it by the measures he has so skillfully developed to be somewhat more severe than its predecessors. Hence, he seems to be suggesting that the 1957-59 period of depressed activity would not be the shortest in the list, though it may be at the short end." At a later point the intermediate severity of the contraction is viewed as suggesting a year and a half to two and a half years from peak-July, 1957 to a recovery date. This opinion, on the part of Moore, seems to support that group of analysts whose enthusiasm about the levels of gross national product, industrial production, or corporate profits in 1959 is on the restrained side. If there is any wide split among business analysts as to trends in 1959, it certainly is far more over the degree of expansion than over the prospect of continued recovery in the year ahead. The optimist has the economy already entering the promised land of 500 billion dollars gross national product even before the U.S. enters the sixties. The pessimist would have it as moving up, but at a lower rate, and would frequently cite, in connection with his restraint the recession, the recovery relationships that Moore has suggested.

The article presents a discussion on business cycle research during the late 1940s. In this article Professor Joseph A. Schumpeter has observed that "analyzing business cycles means neither more nor less than analyzing the economic process of the capitalist era. Both of the papers presented make important and constructive contributions to the solution of this problem of comprehensive analysis. In this context the investment expenditure fluctuates more than consumption, durable goods more than perishable ones, industrial output more than agricultural output, while industrial prices are stabler than agricultural prices, is well established and, is generally accepted. How all sorts of changes in the data affect upswing and downswing is well known; for example, that changes in the propensity to save, government deficits or surpluses, changes in credit policies and interest rates, export or import changes, exert expansionary or deflationary effects is reasonably certain, although the intensity and hence the practical importance of some of these factors either in general or in particular cases is often a matter of doubt and dispute.

This article focuses on the research paper of Professor Frank H. Knight on immutable law in economics. The exclusion in his paper is business cycles and presumably dynamic theory. They are not mentioned in the discussion of theory, and cycles are specifically classed in the category of "reality" where this term is opposed to "theory." Yet "theorists" study the cycle and other dynamic problems, and propound theories about them. Monopoly and all of its many variations and amalgamations are likewise excluded, relegated to "reality" as opposed to "theory." In Professor Knight's system, "economic theory" is again narrowed and estranged from reality through a kind of fatalistic attitude towards unrealistic assumptions which always "must" for some unaccountable reason be made. Professor Knight seems to have bound economic theory hand and foot with limiting and narrowing assumptions, and leaves the reader with the uncomfortable feeling that he can like it or lump it, for that is just the way "theory" is.

The article comments on two papers about money and banking by C.R. Whittlesey and Karl R. Bopp respectively, which have been published within the issue. It is viewed that these two papers have raised several questions regarding the future of the U.S. society. It is opined that both Whittlesey and Bopp were confident of controlling the business cycle through changes in the quantity of money.

This paper investigates the relation between fluctuations in fertility and in economic activity in Israel over the period 1950-1970. The paper opens with some comments on the theoretical basis for expecting pro-cyclical behavior of fertility. This is followed by analysis of annual data of total fertility, unemployment, GNP and an index of industrial production. Total fertility tends to respond to the cyclical indicators among Jews from Europe and America, those born in Israel and those from Asian and African countries, but the response is larger among the former. Cyclical response can be discerned also in the fertility of the non-Jewish population. The performance of the alternative cyclical indicators is compared. Some examination of data on marriage suggests that the cyclical response of birth is not just a reflection of the cyclical response of marriage. In the annual data there is a tendency for Jewish fertility to be more related to the contemporaneous cyclical indicator than the lagged indicator, while the reverse is true for the non-Jewish population. Examination of quarterly and monthly data for a shorter period corroborates this finding. Many factors are involved in determining the lag between an observed cyclical indicator and observed birth; it is being conjectured that the prevalence of abortions in the Jewish population is one contributing factor to the difference in the lag between Jews and Arabs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents summary of articles present at a round table conference on population problems. Joseph J. Springler's paper is concerned principally with the effects of the various population movements now in process in the United States upon the level of employment. Population movements now in process probably exercise a greater influence today than formerly upon the amount of absolute and disguised unemployment in the American economy because of the greater specificity of factors of production today as compared with formerly. Otto Nathan, in his paper, stated that in analyzing the relationship between population movements and the economic development a distinction should be made between the secular trend and the business cycle proper. One of the factors constituting the secular or long-term development is the population movement itself. In his paper, Alan R. Sweezy, expressed that once an investment boom in underway, increase in the labor supply does have an important influence on investment. Wages rise more slowly than they would with a constant labor supply and numerous investment opportunities consequently can be exploited which would otherwise be unprofitable. The boom once started may be expected to last longer if the labor supply is increasing.

Professor Garfield Cox in his research paper published in the March 2, 1936 issue of the journal "The American Economic Review," has made one assumption which may be open to question. For example, he infers at the beginning of his paper, that we are now in the thirty-third month of recovery. With this statement, nearly every one will doubtless agree. The evidence that there has existed in American business a cycle having an average wave length of about forty months is very strong. In both cases, our belief in their existence depends solely upon empirical observations. In view of past experience, it is not probable that the sharp peak in business in 1933 may best be regarded as the crest of an almost submerged forty-month cycle wave, a wave struggling upward but sadly impeded by the downward movement of one of the longer waves, or perhaps of several waves of different lengths acting in combination. Professor John M. Clark showed, a number of years ago, that production in such industries as the manufacture of equipment must necessarily magnify greatly fluctuations in the demand for consumption goods. When the national income shrinks, is it not inevitable that the public will buy goods and other perishable articles before buying durable goods which can be made to last a while longer.

The article analyses the deposits by the individual banker, which is consider as a means of conducting a sound baking business. Business or commercial accounts result from borrowings by corporate and other enterprises which are negotiated through an exchange of business paper for bank credit. The bank's reserve problem is largely concerned with these since business accounts are fluctuating and active, highly sensitive to slight changes in business conditions and in public confidence. In the first place, not all business deposits result from borrowings by business enterprises. The larger corporations of the country have not been, generally spreading, greatly in debt to the banks for several years past, yet many of them have maintained large, often excessive, bank balances which would certainly be classified as business deposits. Business deposits are often highly sensitive to changes in public confidence. It is the savings and income accounts, on the whole, which have been withdrawn during this past year in large amounts, while business deposits have been much more stable. It should be added, however, that if bank failures continue on a wide scale, business concerns, as well as individuals, will be increasingly likely to withdraw their accounts and hold currency or gold.

The article provides brief notes related to meetings organized by various associations. The annual meeting of the American Economic Association will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from December 27-30. Topics on which research papers will be discussed include business cycles, railroad situation, finance in the U.S., labor problem, and industrial accidents. A list of associations that will participate in the meeting is provided. Members who have joined the association with effect from August 1, 1921 are also listed. The second annual meeting of the International Chamber of Commerce will be held in Rome during the week of September 18, 1922. The first session of the National School for Chamber of Commerce Secretaries was held at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, from July 18-80, 1921, under the joint auspices of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the National Association of Commercial Organization Secretaries, and the Northwestern University School of Commerce.

The organizational factors which can influence the "effectiveness" of a management science activity are discussed in this paper. The discussion is based on some preliminary findings from a series of studies, performed by Northwestern University, on the life histories of OR/MS groups in 66 large U.S. companies. Many companies could be observed having difficulties in absorbing their new management science functions. Such factors as the level of managerial support, client receptivity, organizational and technical capability of an OR/MS group (i.e., the type and quality of its personnel and leadership), the organizational location, group reputation, the relevance of projects performed, and other variables are noted as being significant in determining effectiveness. How well established a group was in the organization is identified as being a critical factor in how these variables would influence the potential for a group's success or failure. This level of "establishment" is defined in terms of four life-cycle phases, namely, Pre-birth, Introductory, Transitional and Maturity. A case study demonstrating the appearance of these phases is presented. Successful implementation of a group's output is discussed as a possible measure of effectiveness. Client "receptivity" is related to the freedom permitted to a group, by their clients, to select projects, gather data, and implement proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the problem of scheduling production from one period to the next to minimize long-run expected costs where the only relevant considerations are the expense of revising production and the charges related to inventory. We first consider the case of constant sales known over time in order to compare exact and approximate solutions. The approach to these solutions is based on minimizing the costs of deviating from long-run equilibrium values of production and inventory. The same approach is then used to handle the more realistic possibility of uncertain future demands. Solutions are obtained for both linear and quadratic inventory and production cost functions. Because future demand is assumed to be specified by some probability distribution, inventory costs must be approximated in order to obtain a closed-form solution; however, the result should differ insignificantly from an exact optimal solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents abstracts of studies on economics which were published in the 1964 volume 74, issue 2, of Revue D'Economie Politique. The paper titled Liquidity, the Rate of Interest and the Saving-Investment-Liquidity-Decisions, by Emil. M. Claassen, shows that the liquidity calcul in connection with the rate of interest operates on the margin as well as the household's liquidity and saving decisions as of the firm's liquidity and investment decisions. The paper titled Technical Progress and Decentralization, by Louis Reboud, defines technological progress as being indicative of the progress of productivity and shows that decentralization comprises the decentralization of economic activity and also the power of decision-making.

This section presents abstracts of studies on finance which were published in the March 1965 issue of The Journal of Finance. The paper titled Factors Determining Bank Deposit Growth By State: An Empirical Analysis by Bruce C. Cohen and George G. Kaufman, identifies and measures the relevant structural and economic variables associated with deposit growth by state. The paper titled The Value of Pension Promises--A Major Source of Consumer Wealth Distortion, by Walter Williams, shows the distortion in the size of consumer wealth as reported on the balance sheets of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The paper titled Financial Flows Over Recent Business Cycles, by Sue N. Atkinson, analyzes the direction of the flow of funds accounts among sectors in the U.S.

This section presents abstracts of articles on economics which were published in the December 1964 issue of The Economic History Review. The paper titled Tonnages, Medieval and Modern, by Frederic C. Lane, describes the distinction between gross registered, net registered, displacement, deadweight, measurement freight and old registered tonnage. The paper titled Provisions for Armies, 1509-50: A Study in the Effectiveness of Early Tudor Government, by C. S. L. Davies, discusses the measurement of the ability of the government to feed its armies. The paper titled The Price Revolution, by J. D. Gould, looks at several issues in pricing and prices. The paper also discusses the history and origin of the Price Revolution in Great Britain.