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This article presents abstracts of articles on economics published in the January-March 1965 issue of The Indian Economic Journal. In the paper An Activity Analysis Approach to Measure Productive Efficiency in Agriculture: A Case Study of Ahmednagar and Nasik Districts, by K. R. Bharadwaj and R. Bharadwaj, the authors have made an attempt to employ the activity analysis technique to measure productive efficiency of agriculture in India. This technique enables the authors to handle more efficiently multiple inputs without varying the usual index number problems. The approach requires only the more general convexity condition on the production set and the non-positivity of the slope of the isoquant. In the first two sections the methodological issues and the empirical procedure have been discussed. In the final section the results of an empirical enquiry using the farm management data pertaining to the Ahmednagar and Nasik districts have been presented. Furthermore, the article Central Banking in Developing Countries: Some Lessons of Australian Experience, by H. W. Arndt considers each of the major central banking functions such as foreign exchange policy, control of money supply, selective control of credit and development of capital market in order to show how they have come to be exercised by Australia's Central Bank, what problems have arisen and what lessons the Australian experience may hold for central banking in the developing countries. Moreover, the purpose of the paper Production Function for Indian Steel Industry, by A. K. Sarkar is to study the functional relationship of output in the Indian steel industry with that of different inputs. The modified Cobb-Douglas type regression equation has been fitted to the time-series data by the method of least squares in the multiple regression equation with a linear relationship.

The article presents abstracts of several research papers related to economic history and development and national economics. The first research paper "The Late Victorian Economy," by W. Ashworth, seeks fresh grounds of discussion on the basis of agreement about the contrast in growth rates between the mid-nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries in Great Britain. The second article "Australian Economic Developments," by H.P. Brown, states that final use of Australian economic resources has moved strongly towards fixed capital formation, defense and education in the four years from the top of the last boom to the present full capacity level. The third paper "Investment in the Public Sector of South Africa," by G.W.G. Browne, analyses investment in the public sector in relation to economic growth in South Africa. The fourth paper "Investment and the Balance of Payments of South Africa," by J.C. du Plessis, examines the limiting effects of the balance of payments on the cyclical expansion and economic growth of South Africa for the years 1956 to 1964, and analyses the import content of fixed investment over this period.

This article presents abstracts of several papers about economics published in the March 1965 issue of the journal Economic Record. In the article Synthetic Fibres and Australia's Economic Future, M. Polasek summarizes the main results of an extensive statistical inquiry into technological displacement of virgin wool by non-cellulosic man-man fibres during the last decade. While the objective of the paper Price Determination in Models of the Inflationary Process is to see which of the four views about the determination of commodity prices is the most appropriate for the Australian economy.

The article discusses the economic effects of the gold discoveries upon South Africa from 1886-1910. South Africa's gold discoveries present a peculiarly happy situation for a study of the changes accompanying these new conditions. Into this simple economy there suddenly burst a vast predominant force, creating a new industry overnight whose product, gold, should exercise its powerful effects upon the whole world. At first glance, it might be supposed that South Africa merely offers on a somewhat larger scale the conditions so ably discussed by a leading economist in his papers concerning the Australian discoveries. Unlike Australia which was soon provided with a domestic refinery and mint, the product of the South African mines, raw bullion, went out of the country in the same manner as any other merchandise export, without reference to exchange rates or specie points. It is, thus, the movement of coined gold and refined gold bars, not crude gold bullion, which must be watched as indicating shifts in South Africa's international trade position.

The pricing, capital raising and investment practices of ports have been studied in some official reports mainly to provide a guide to the optimal allocation of resources by port authorities. These studies have naturally considered the domestic social costs and benefits of changes in the policies of ports, since their operations are part of the economy's infrastructure. The literature is smaller on the private aspect of port costs to users—the direct and indirect costs to shipowners and shippers or consignees. This may be because the direct costs involved, which are fairly easily calculated, are frequently a small component of the total operating costs of shipping and o the selling prices of goods. On the other hand, the indirect costs involved, which include both monetary and imputed costs, may be a large cost component and are not easily calculable. The building up of sound generalisations rests ultimately on the evidence of actual situations. This paper makes some analysis of data on user costs in Australian ports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical and modern demand theory provide parametric linear and nonlinear hypotheses which may be used as prior information in the estimation of systems of demand equations. Restricted estimation using this prior information enables the optimal demand parameters obeying the conditions of consumer maximisation theory to be established and also provides a test of the consistency of the sample and the prior information. Price and income elasticities are estimated subject to the classical restrictions of demand theory—the Slutsky condition, the Engel aggregation condition and the homogeneity conditions—using Australian data. Tests of significance are made on the individual restrictions and the equivalence of three overall tests of significance is examined. The consumer utility function is then postulated as separable, two commodity groupings are suggested, and the demand elasticities are estimated subject to various assumptions about additive and separable utility functions. Again, the null hypothesis on the prior information is tested. Finally, there is a brief comparison of the methods and results in this paper with the methods and results of A. A. Powell on the same data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents abstracts of articles on economics published in the June 1965 issue of the journal The Economic Record. The article Measuring Australian Economic Growth, 1861 to 1938-39, by E. A. Boehm provides a detailed review of the book Australian Domestic Product, Investment and Foreign Borrowing 1861-1938/39, by N. G. Butlin. An appendix to the article discusses the nature and size of the unrecorded transhipments in Australia's trade of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Meanwhile, the paper titled The Development of Trade and Specialization in a Primitive Economy, by R. T. Shand considers the problems of how to expand production and income of economic units in the subsistence sector of a primitive economy such as Papua-New Guinea, once one or more of the factors of production initially available have become fully employed. Three ways of obtaining further growth are examined such as new techniques, greater specialization in resource use among units and additions to the resources of units. Moreover, the article Economic Change and Differentiation in New Britain, by Scarlett Epstein presents a research in one Tolai parish and collected a 100 per cent socio-economic census plus detailed economic statistics for a 15 per cent stratified random sample of all parish households. The data indicate that Tolai economic progress is basically due to European contact. Most Tolai ex-migrant labourers have tried to imitate European productive activities much more than they have attempted copying European consumption patterns. This new stress on entrepreneurship is in line with Tolai customary emphasis on enterprise and thriftiness in terms of shell money. The use of cash has not ruled out shell money accumulation, which continues side by side with capital and cash accumulation.

Presents a series of abstracts on various topics of economics published in the March 1964 issue of the periodical 'The Economic Record,' vol. 40. Survey of Australian economy; Overview of the economies of Oceanian region; Appraisal of surveys of business opinion in New Zealand; Introduction of dynamic process analysis in a model of trade cycle; Overview of the industrial scene in Australia.

Presents information related to several abstracts on economics published in the June 1962 issue of the journal 'The Economic Record.' Marginal labor and investment coefficients of Australian manufacturing industry; Economic analysis of investment in New Zealand manufacturing from 1957-58; Private savings banks in Australia from 1956-60; Soviet investment policy.

This paper examines the effects of aggregation over time (or, alternatively, the effects of using different lengths of observation period) of a sectoral macro-econometric model and shows that temporal aggregation can have a significant effect on the estimation of the model. The structure of the monetary sector as developed by Norton, Cohen and Sweeny [8] in the Reserve Bank's overall quarterly model of the Australian economy is considered and an analogous monthly model is constructed for the same sector for the period 1959 (2) to 1969 (4). While the rationale of the monthly model is no different from that of the Bank's quarterly model, the specification of variables for the former is dictated, at least in some eases, by the availability of monthly data. An immediate comparison of the effects of temporal aggregation is made by aggregating this monthly model into a quarterly one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information regarding developments in the field of economic research. Under the sponsorship of the American Economic Association, a number of associates and former students have joined in the preparation of a volume of Economic Essays in honor of the eightieth birthday of John Bates Clark. A meeting of the American Statistical Association was held February 26, 1927 in New York to discuss the topic, "Forecasting the Volume of Orders or Sales." The University of Melbourne has received a gift of 30,000 pounds from B. B. Ritchie, a prominent pastoralist of Penshurst, Victoria, for the promotion of economic research. lt is proposed to establish a chair of economics, the occupant of which will have adequate facilities foil pursuing research into economic problems in Australia. An Institute of Public Affairs will be held at the University of Virginia for two or more weeks beginning on Monday, August 8, 1927. Among the topics suggested for discussions are "Farm Relief," "Mounting Cost of State and Municipal Expenses," and "The Cancellation of Foreign Debts."

Presents several abstracts related to economics, published in the December 1962 issue of the journal 'The Economic Record.' Economy of New Zealand in 1962; Industrial courts and women's wages in Australia; Marriages of migrants in Australia.