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The article discusses the issues concerning the transport policy in Great Britain. The formation of transport policy has been and still is a confused world of ideology, interest, economics and several adjustment for political gain. A product of this complex system of interaction has been the Transport Holding Inc. The functions of the holding company are mainly concerned with investment business and the handling of the central pool of capital. The organization and structure of Transport Holding is presented. The company emerges as an interest group attempting to influence decision making, in a very similar way to the more commonly accepted private groups.

This article presents abstracts of several papers published in the February 1965 issue of the journal Bulletin of Economics and Statistics. In the paper Notes on Public Investment Criteria in the United Kingdom, P. D. Henderson discussed the problem of devising a reasonable set of criteria for appraising public investment projects in Great Britain. While in the article The Absorption of Manpower by the Urban and Rural sectors of Brazil, Raouf Kahil examined the available data concerning urban and rural populations in Brazil and argues that the basis of a valid judgment of the job opportunities offered by the urban and rural sectors were cannot be seen.

This article presents abstracts of several papers about economics published in the September 1964 issue of the journal the Manchester School. The paper Special Deposits As an Instrument of Monetary Policy, N. J. Gibson assessed the effectiveness of special deposits as an instrument of monetary policy and how they fit into the context of post-war monetary policy in Great Britain. While in the article A Reconsideration of Investment and Pricing Criteria in the Nationalised Industries, A. J. Merrett examined alternative investment and pricing policies for nationalized industries in the light of the proposition that since the costs of welfare maximization may be considerable and these costs enter into the function to be maximized.

Presents information related to several articles related to economics and statistics. Statistical discrepancies in the Great Britain national income estimates; Issues related to postal finance in the United States; Problems of time-stream evaluation.

As war prosperity brought an end to the worst depression in history, there was general agreement that preparations should be made to prevent a similar disaster in the future. Even the wartime government of Great Britain, despite its basically conservative character, accepted as one of their primary postwar aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment in the 1944 White Paper on Employment Policy. In the U.S., the same movement led to the passage of the Employment Act of 1946, with its obligation to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power. Although one of the things to be contained in the economic report provided for by the act is a review of economic conditions during the preceding year, there is nothing else in the act which specifies the period to which recommendations are to apply. But the author believes that most economists have from the start felt that the basic function of the council was to prevent serious depressions such as that which struck in 1929.

This article presents abstracts of several papers about economics published in the March 1965 issue of the Economic Journal. In the article Problems of Planning for Economic Growth in a Mixed Economy, Robert Shone briefly outlined the planning developments in Great Britain since the National Economic Development Council was formed in March 1962. While in the article The Minimal Economy, Henry Smith examined what is involved in working out the implications of the assumption that economic activity is confined to minimizing the disutility involved in reaching a preconceived standard.

Presents a series of abstracts on various topics of economics and polity published in the May 1964 issue of the periodical 'Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science,' vol. 30. Benefits of restrictive trade practices in Great Britain; Importance of nationality in petroleum exploration in Western Canada; Overview of a linear programming estimate of changes in industrial input coefficients.

Presents information related to several articles on economics. Economic growth and productivity in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany and Japan in the post war period; Dividend policies of electric utility firms; Relationship between the quantity of materials imported by the United States and the level of industrial production and prices of imports.

Presents an overview of articles on economics published in volume 31 of January 1964 issue of the journal 'Manchester school,' in Great Britain. Description about regional variations in earnings of workers in the British engineering industry; Validity of the liquid asset theory as presented by Radcliffe Report in Great Britain; Receipt of various components of government revenue from road users in the country.

This paper investigates the discrepancy between recorded unemployment and real unemployment in the regions of Great Britain. The study was prompted in part by the numerous attempts made to measure hidden unemployment for the US economy (see MINCER(5)), but it differs from earlier studies on two counts. First, unlike these earlier studies, which have concentrated on measuring hidden cyclical unemployment, an attempt is made here to explore the possibility of measuring the structural variety of hidden employment. Second, a different method has been used to calculate hidden cyclical unemployment than in earlier studies.
The paper is in five parts. Part I examines the gap between real unemployment and recorded unemployment, and argues for a division of this gap into cyclical and structural components. The second part-describes operationally useful methods of measuring hidden unemployment. In parts 3 and 4, the methods of measuring hidden unemployment are applied to the regions of Great Britain and to a sample of North-West localities. Part 5 compares the findings with two earlier studies (CORRY and ROBERTS (2) and STILWELL (8)). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on a study which analyzed the factors that shaped the mix of domestic and foreign investments in Great Britain. The questions to which this paper addressed itself have now, for the most part, been answered. The percentages of national income allocated to foreign and domestic investment do show a negative correlation for the period, but this correlation is not carried through to the amounts of home and foreign investment, either in money or real terms. Cairncross's approach offers an explanation of their relationship in that the short-run factorB of fluctuation seemed to be those that operated in the same manner on the two series, while long-run trends affected the two inversely. Although this model has more intuitive appeal than theoretical rigor, it does provide an adequate long-run function for both foreign and domestic investment.

Presents a series of abstracts on various topics of economics published in the May 1964 issue of the periodical 'The Manchester School.' Relationship between profitability and growth of firms in Great Britain; Studies of changes in industrial location within Great Britain; Description of a model to examine private savings in Great Britain.

The article provides information on various journals related to economics and sociology. The "Economic Journal" contains papers by economist R.L. Wedgwood that discusses the statistics of railway costs. He analyses the recent returns of traffic and receipts, and contends that a more scientific statistical system should be introduced. Economist H.W. Macrosty submits proposals for an economic survey of Great Britain and physician Jacques Dumas discusses the present state of the land system in France. The "International Journal of Ethics" shares the views of economists. Professor J.S. Mackensie gives his opinion that late Edward Cuird has built up a solid treasure-house of wisdom that will outlast many erections in breadth of knowledge, balance and judgment, maturity of insight and power of luminous expression. Professor F. Tidily figures out the late Friedrich Paulsen, as child of a hardy, frugal, clear-headed and warm-hearted seafaring race who gave philosophical expression to the ideals of a stock from which so many intellectual leaders of the old fatherland had sprung, and upon the integrity of which the future glory of Germany depends.

Gibrat's law of proportionate effect states that the proportional change in the size of a firm is independent of its absolute size. An implication of this is that large and small firms have the same average proportionate rates of growth. Earlier studies of the growth of firms up to the early 1950's have found evidence to support the law. This paper shows that during the last decade the law has ceased to operate and that now large firms are growing at a significantly faster proportional rate than small firms. Concentration has been increasing in industry over a long period, for much of which Gibrat's law with all its implications held. The fact that growth was found to be independent of absolute size was not in conflict but was, rather, an explanation of the trend. The finding that larger firms are now the fastest growing suggests concentration is increasing at an even greater rate than when the law held. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the extent to which the model of a competitive labour market may be held to be relevant in a consideration of the demand and supply of highly specialized manpower, such as professional engineers and scientists. It is striking that up to the present time the Government Appointed Committee on Manpower Resources for Science and Technology, in all its wide ranging discussions, and recommendations for an increased supply of scientific manpower, have hardly examined the workings of the labour market for this type of manpower in Britain. The alleged ‘shortage’ of scientists and engineers, we are told almost daily by some distinguished figure from the academic or professional engineering world, will lead to all sorts of dire consequences. The available statistical data on the relative earnings of engineers will be examined and in the light of this some of the findings of the Committee on Manpower Resources for Science and Technology will be briefly assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper, D. Gujarati (1972) examined registered unemployment and vacancies data for Great Britain 1958-1971. He reported that his empirical tests revealed a change in the unemployment--vacancies relationship (the UV curve) from 1966 (IV). This change was attributed to the introduction of the Redundancy Payments Act (1965) and the National Insurance Act (1966). This legislation, Gujarati felt, eased the financial pressure on an unemployed individual, allowing him to spend more time job-searching. A log-linear relationship between unemployment and vacancies was fitted up to 1966 (III): log U[sub t] = beta[sub 0] + beta[sub 1] log V[sub t] + beta[sub 2]t (1) where U = unemployment rate, V = vacancy rate and t = time. This UV curve was then extrapolated until 1971 (II) and the resultant predicted unemployment series was compared with the actual series. A "correcting factor" was computed to calculate "true" estimates of unemployment (i.e., what registered unemployment would have been, had the above legislation not been introduced). This note contains several comments which fall into two categories. The first concerns the specification of the UV curve and the statistical results obtained by Gujarati. The second concerns the economic interpretation of these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a series of abstracts on various topics of economics published in the June 1964 issue of the journal 'The Economic Journal.' Comparison of economic growth among various countries of western Europe and North America; Examination of various propositions related to supply of money; Interdependence of the yield of profits tax and payout ratio for the period of 1949-61 in Great Britain.

Presents information related to several articles in economics. Quantitative approach to medieval population change; Ideological factors in specie resumption and treasury policy in the United States; Economic growth of Great Britain.

Using a model where the company income tax base is a function of levels of economic activity, it is shown that there is no basis for the widely held view that the built-in effect of the British company tax system has been destabilising. The model, synthesized from separate models of gross profit and depreciation, was estimated for eight industry groups using annual data for the period 1950-66. A comparison of the lags in the model with the length of business cycles between 1950--66 showed that the automatic effect of the tax is likely to have been stabilizing.
This paper examines in detail the cyclical behavior of the company income tax base under the old system of income and profits taxation, and then assesses the automatic stabilizing qualities of the system. No evidence is found to support the view that the built-in effect of the tax on the level of economic activity was destabilising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses several issues concerning economics and industries. Agricultural laws and legislation in the U.S.; Problems concerning building guilds in Great Britain; Implications on economics.

The article presents data on the social composition of the Royal Economic Society (R.E.S.) in Great Britain from 1890 to 1960 by analyzing a 10 per cent sample of home-based members in selected years throughout the period since the society's foundation in 1890. The R.E.S. membership lists include the names of many subscribers who possess no serious claims to be regarded as professional economists by any normal definition of those terms. Nevertheless, throughout its long life the society's ranks have included the great majority of British professional economists as well as many serious amateur students of the subject and the occupational statistics provide some basis for judging the relative importance of the two categories. The R.E.S. data provided in the paper provides only limited and indirect evidence of this newer type of professionalization, though it is compatible with it. The strongest common link among Fellows of the Society was their subscription to "The Economic Journal," a periodical coverage in 1960 than in the 1890s and although subscribers are not necessarily readers, the subscription lists obviously provide important insights into the journal's audience.

This article presents abstracts of several papers about political economics published in the December 1964 issue of the Journal of Political Economy. The main purpose of the paper Advertising and Competition was the investigation of the charge that advertising and competition are incongruous. In the article Adjustment to Senility by Induced Contraction, Simon Rottenberg stated that many sections of the British community had long been convinced that the rate of decline in the Lanchashire cotton manufacturing industry could be stemmed only by destroying the industry's excess capacity.

The article presents an exploration into the financial conditions of the housing market in Great Britain throughout the first half of the 20th century. The parallels between the housing crisis being addressed in the 1950s and that of the post-World War I era are outlined, with additional data examining the interim period between the wars. An overview of statistical data is provided for housing materials and labor costs through the various time frames. Additional mention is given to the market forces which led to recovery, including private enterprise growth, local authority housing contracts, and other government subsidies.

The article presents a study on the growth of labor union membership in Great Britain. Membership in labor unions is considered in the study as if it were an asset in the portfolio of the working man which is expected to yield services for consumption. It is said that such an approach allows analysis of the union membership growth with various conventional tools of economic theory. The findings of the study suggests that the demand for labor union services is relatively insensitive to price and union dues might be increased without effects on the size of membership.

The article measures the effect of public finance during the period 1793-1815 on the rate and direction of Great Britain's economic development. It explores the country's involvement in war during the period. One aspect of the war which has intermittently attracted economists" attention from the time of the "bullionist" controversy is the effect of the expedients that were adopted in the field of public finance. The article describes the sources of data which economic historian can use to be able to fairly measure the effect of the country's finance on the rate and direction of economic growth. An analysis on the economic indicators during the period is presented.

The article presents the author's reply pertaining to capital supply and national well-being. Referring to Mr. Keirstead's questions, Snyder remarks that they are derived from a widespread belief that Great Britain's "periodic break-downs" are "inherent" in the present capitalistic system. So the evidence that has been building up in the last 15 years seems to portray an inherent stability and persistence of industrial growth unimagined by most economic and socialistic writers. The forces "inherent" in industry seem admirably adapted to maintain such an equilibrium as Professor Cannon depicts in the human body. It seems only when the body economic is invaded by "infection," such as credit inflation, speculation and booms, that breakdowns occur. Snyder adds that in another 10 or 20 years it is possible that the Soviet experiment will reveal much. But it still may remain open whether the drastic methods it has employed would be feasible in a highly developed industrialized system like in the United States or Great Britain. The capitalistic system has been in a continuous process of transformation and development, pretty much ever since its latest phase began 150 years ago with the introduction of the steam engine and the coming of the Power Age. Snyder predicts that cooperative kind of socialism would be perhaps far more efficient and beneficent than most of its critics can believe.

This article presents the abstract of the paper Factors Affecting the Demand for British Exports which was published in the November 1964 issue of the journal Bulletin of Economics and Statistics. Imports of Great Britain have been increasing at a faster rate, which is why the National Economic Development Council pitched the target for increased exports at 5 percent per annum. According to the above analysis, the increase in world trade is likely to be much slower than 5 percent, if real income increase at 3 percent, trade grows at 2.1 percent. The most important factors determining exports of machinery and transport equipment are the prices of other Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development countries.

The article focuses on the railways and economic growth in England and Wales. The article refers from the book "New Economic History," by Gary Hawke written in and about the United Kingdom. Several chapters in the book are devoted to the developments of input and output measures, and these are used to compute an index of total factor productivity for the years 1840-1890. The pricing policy of railroads is studied, estimates of the iron-demand generated in construction calculated, the cyclical impact of railroad expenditures described, and possible benefits external to the railroad users discussed. The heart of the book is the calculation of the social savings generated by British railroads over the period 1840-1870, with particular attention paid to the year 1865. The savings in resources attributable to shifting from one mode to another then depends upon the elasticity of the demand for transport services, the cost per ton-mile of shipping by non-railroad means (canals, roads, etc.) and the cost per ton-mile of shipping by railroads.

The purpose of this article is to explore some of the relationships between educational planning and manpower planning.[1] It is frequently argued that the expansion of the educational system should be based on detailed forecasts of the educated manpower that will be required in a growing economy. My emphasis is somewhat different: it is that manpower forecasts in a developed country like Great Britain must take account of the likely expansion of education. The basic argument will involve four variables: demand and supply in "the education market", and demand and supply in the labour market. All of these are policy-variables, in the sense that they are subject to a measure of control by the public authorities. But only one of them, supply in the education market, is a policy-variable pure and simple, and some of them--demand in the labour market is an example--can only be influenced by the State to a limited degree. It is precisely this which creates problems for both educational planning and manpower planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has made it increasingly difficult to agree with the type of view expressed by J. M. Keynes when he wrote: "... Ricardo conquered England as completely as the Holy Inquisition conquered Spain. Not only was his theory accepted by the city, by statesmen and by the academic world. But controversy ceased; the other point of view completely disappeared; it ceased to be discussed. The great puzzle of Effective Demand with which Malthus had wrestled vanished from economic literature ".[1] There has been a growing awareness that, during the early decades of the nineteenth century, critical voices were repeatedly raised against the validity of Say's law, its acceptance by the Ricardians, and their dismissal of the problem of effective demand. However, as yet it is not widely recognised that a significant portion of this opposition was provided by certain of the leading British quarterlies and monthlies of the period. Hence, as a contribution to a more balanced understanding of the economic thought of those years, this article is designed as a survey of the scope of the attack on the above-mentioned aspects of Ricardian thought in a number of the influential periodicals during each of the three decades from 1820 onwards.[2]
In summary, it can be seen that, rather than exciting general approbation, the views of Say and Ricardo were subject to vigorous and not unintelligent criticism in influential journals. Defensive action was undertaken in the Edinburgh Review and, to some extent, the Westminster Review: but these eventually deferred to the weight of mounting opposition.[4] Of the contributions surveyed, those by David Robinson, Thomas Malthus, G. P. Scrope, James Lawson, and the unknown
1 Op. cit., pp. 92 and 100. 2 Vol. VIII, July 1848, p. 416. 3 Op. cit., pp. 418-9. 4 Although they appear to have made no contribution to the effective demand controversy, it should be mentioned that Taits Edinburgh Magazine and the London Magazine were for a... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the role of professional journals on development of economic ideas in Great Britain. The first half of the century was the era of the reviews, and starting with the Byronic success of the Edinburgh in 1802 they were for many years the most important feature of English periodical literature. Four of these reviews, the Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly Review, the Westminster Review, and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine--not strictly a review, as it published many items that were not reviews, but dealt with much the same field--stand out above the others from almost any point of view, and certainly from the point of view of the economist. Among the periodicals read by the educated man, they had, year in and year out, the largest circulation and the greatest influence. Ten other reviews started between 1827 and 1850. None of these had the influence of the four major ones, and six had ceased publication by 1850. Further study of the Edinburgh and of the other reviews has strengthened and broadened this feeling. After 1824 the Westminster rendered much the same service for the middle-class reformers and the intellectual radicals as did the Edinburgh for the gentry. The role of the Quarterly and of Blackwood's was less direct, but their continual criticism of the theories and of the policy proposals of political economists at least made the opponents of economic change familiar with the new forces at large in the field of thought and policy.

The article offers information about the Overseas Development Institute in Great Britain. It was founded towards the end of 1960 by a group of people who consider that the economic development of the countries of Asia, Africa and South America, and their relations with the industrially developed areas of the world, are of material importance. Its funds were received from the Ford Foundation, from British industry and commerce, and from the Nuffield Foundation. The institute is non-profit-making and its policies are decided by a council which is independent and non-governmental.

The process whereby innovations diffuse throughout an economy or throughout the world has interested many people at many times. One of the more intriguing examples of this process is the spread of the use of coke to make pig iron, which has interested investigators because of two seemingly incompatible properties. The use of coke in the blast furnace was one of the enabling innovations of the industrial revolution in Britain, and it played a similarly important role in the industrialization of many, if not all, other industrializing countries in the nineteenth century. Despite this importance, however, the spread of coke was not rapid, there was often a delay of as much as a half a century in the spread of this innovation from Britain to other countries. This article is based on economist Louis C. Hunter's masterful analysis and suggest some alterations in his hypothesis about the antebellum iron industry. This discussion has been concerned with changes in the production of pig iron and has discussed that part of the iron industry that made this material.

To make an appraisal, it is first necessary to have some standard by which an evaluation can be made; in this case a satisfactory definition of economic progress. Beyond the definition of a standard, an appraisal involves the application of yardsticks which can be used to measure achievement or lack of achievement in terms of the accepted standard. Progress means movement toward some particular goal or objective. The difficulty comes in the selection of the goal. Goals are determined by philosophical and ethical considerations and in the final analysis are based upon group or individual preferences. There is no appeal beyond the point of the statement of such preferences. No one can prove by an appeal to logic the superiority of one preference over another. For one thing, a failure to understand the relative nature of individual and social goals accounts for a considerable amount of confusion which arises over the meaning and content of progress. As the attitude of many Americans toward the economic depression in Great Britain demonstrates, there can be sharp differences in the interpretation of progress and the means of obtaining it even between two countries that share a common cultural heritage.