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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.

The article considers some aspects of the financial history of the United States. It focuses on some of the monetary operations of the Treasury during the years of depression that followed the crisis of 1893. The article highlights the salient events of the period, including the struggle with a declining revenue, the continued drain on the gold holdings, the repeated danger of the Treasury's collapse, and the successive loans needed to save it from virtual bankruptcy. The difficulties under which the Treasury inevitably labors under the present anomalous system or lack of system are examined.

Psychological analysis of consumers' spending and saving behavior in response to inflation, recession, or increased assets and inventories is shown to result in findings that differ from generalizations presented by traditional economic analysis. The paper indicates the usefulness of the methods applied in behavioral studies of economic processes. [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 conflict referred to in the title of this paper arose when different answers were given to the question 'who should be dismissed?', following a recession in trade at the Consett Iron Company in 1961. We attempt to demonstrate that by a social-structural analysis one can obtain a clearer understanding of the nature of such conflict. While any particular case will have idiosyncratic features that make it unique, the mode of analysis may be applied to other situations which have a family resemblance. The paper is divided into two main sections: I. A discussion of the extent to which a generalized belief system exists concerning the principles which should govern dismissals arising from redundancy. An indication of some potential sources of conflict arising from the application of any such principles. II. A presentation of the Consett case in the light of the above discussion. Essentially we ask how the various interest groups defined the situation confronting them. Towards what goal or goals was their action directed? What criteria did they appeal to, what means did they advocate and what resources did they mobilize in the pursuit of their goals? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a critical discussion of the papers by George H. Hilderbrand and William Fellner on long-run policies of the U.S. government. The author comments that with respect to long-run period both the economists correctly imply that full employment is assured only if we act right. There is among economists a vast amount of agreement bearing on what constitutes right action. Still, there remains a conflict of advice which is crucial when we come to specifics. The conflict is such that we dare not gloss it over but must, if we are to arrive at a stable consensus, keep it well to the fore. When it comes to selecting means for the control of aggregate demand, it notoriously may make a great difference, in what devices one will espouse, whether he does or does not believe that changes in the real value of cash balances exert significant force. If we turn to the problem of selecting a guide to action upon aggregate demand, we find again disagreements which the author doubts will be cleared up unless we frequently leaf through a well-kept record on the sources of disagreement, which goes back to and includes the argument over the automaticity of full employment.

This paper presents a response by John M. Peterson to comments on his article regarding employment effects of minimum wages in the U.S. The author points out that no attempt was made to explain the results among females with high and low minimums. He argues that Richard A. Lester cannot use the recession to account for the less favorable employment changes for women than men. The author stresses that his article remains unaffected by Lester's observations.

This paper offers an explanation for this behavior. Briefly, SLAs displayed marked responsiveness to monetary policies during 1953-61 because the rates they paid for funds were rigid relative to rates paid by competing outlets for loanable funds. Therefore, funds flowing to them increased during periods of business recession and credit ease and declined during the later stages of periods of business expansion and credit restraint. The rates they paid for funds were relatively inflexible over the cycle primarily because of imperfections in the means by which they intermediated funds between savers and mortgage borrowers.
The paper has suggested that the mortgage lending activity of SLAs was responsive to monetary policies during 1953-61 because the rates SLAs paid for funds were rigid relative to interest returns on competing outlets for loanable funds. It has offered the hypothesis that this rigidity rested in an important way on imperfections in the means by which SLAs intermediated funds between lenders and mortgage borrowers. It has described several factors which helped to produce this rigidity. First, there were usury laws. Second, there was uncertainty. Third, there were long-run considerations. Fourth, them were complications which arose from the structures of the markets in which SLAs competed. Fifth, there were factors which arose within the dynamics of the cycle. Finally, there were complications which accrued from the position of SLAs as long-term lenders and short-term borrowers--or, in effect, their situation of imperfect access to long-run sources of funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining has usually been regarded as the simplest case of the location problem, to be explained, at least at the level of the producing district, largely in terms of the least-cost principle. This approach would also appear to have some relevance to the examination of the location of individual pits within a particular coalfield. This paper outlines a simple model for the development of an hypothetical coalfield, then considers the changing patterns of pit location on the main New South Wales coalfields in relation to this model. It would seem that there is a close coincidence between the hypothesized situation and the main evolutionary stages of these fields. There are, however, some significant departures from the idealized scheme, particularly during periods of industrial or economic recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests the need for inquiry into the consequences of fore-knowledge of short-term changes in the economy. A forecast, rational and convincing, may accelerate and accentuate the trend it predicts, unless, of course, it is kept secret. With the development of new dependable forecasting tools we may enter a strange new world wherein the prediction of recession will bring on depression; the prediction of inflation, hyperinflation. In a mathematically indeterminate economic system, there may be a certainty principle, contrasting weirdly with the principle of uncertainty in the orderly world of physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been a number of empirical analyses of the accuracy of economic forecasts. These studies have shown that economists have generally underestimated increases in gross national product and its components. On the other hand, when these variables declined, the predictions frequently failed to forecast these movements, thus producing turning point errors. One of the studies also indicated that forecasters were unable to "identify" cyclical peaks for some time after the occurrence of the event. For instance, while the peak preceding the 1960 recession occurred in the third quarter of 1960, none of the three sets of forecasts analyzed in this study predicted this turn in advance. The best performance was turned in by the forecasters who recognized the turn near the end of the third quarter. However, the forecasts of this set had, earlier in the third quarter, indicated that the economy would grow more rapidly in that quarter than it had in the second period. The other two sets of forecasts did not recognize the turn until the beginning or end of the fourth quarter of 1960. This paper point errors in the vicinity of cyclical peaks and troughs and will advance one hypothesis to explain why the observed errors might have occurred. This knowledge might prove useful in improving the quality of future forecasts.

The article presents brief examination of the way in which changes in the capacity utilization rate affect economic activity. Changes in capacity utilization rates affect the level of investment through a complicated system of distributed lags. These lags arise chiefly from expectational phenomena and from the time sequence which intervenes between initial decisions and the installation of new plant and equipment. During periods of prosperity, backlogs of profitable investment opportunities are built up which cushion the economy against the kind of violent investment response to output changes depicted in the simple accelerator model. Through influences on prices and productivity, cyclical changes in capacity-utilization rates affect the share of income going to profits. Given our tax structure and the behavior of dividends, this shift in income shares implies that for changes in output and income relative to capacity the multiplier is relatively small. Effect of changes in the capacity-utilization ratio on productivity and hence on profits, is a complicated one. In particular, the longer subnormal capacity-utilization rates continue, the more likely is it that employment will be reduced proportionately with the decline in output. The share of any income decline absorbed by wages and salaries would thus tend to grow larger as the length and depth of the recession increases. Moreover, if the fall in profits is more than temporary in nature, dividends will begin to absorb some of the decline.

Twelve years unmarked by serious economic contraction have elapsed since the end of World War II The impressive postwar record of growth and resistance to depression is partly responsible for the widespread tendency to emphasize aspects of recent experience which are believed to be new or abnormal and are thought to have contributed importantly to economic stability. The structural changes of the past twenty five years, it is asserted, have so altered the response mechanism of the economy that wide swings are a thing of the past. On the other hand the postwar prosperity has been due to war or cold war influences which are not only autonomous but abnormal in their persistence for nearly two decades. If either of these explanations is correct, it has obvious implications for future stability. So also does a third possibility; namely, that although the postwar economy differs from its predecessors in details of structure and the mixture of autonomous factors at work, there has been no essential change in the nature or causes of business fluctuations. The business cycles of experience have differed according to the combination of autonomous forces and structural factors present in each historical period. A number of structural changes distinguish the postwar economy from its forerunners, and many of these changes have fostered stability by damping induced movements of effective demand.

For over forty years economists and statisticians have studied factors associated with the 1929 upper turning point in the United States and the ensuing depression. The literature of economics and statistics has been enriched by these efforts, but many of the hypotheses concerning the perverse economic behavior of this period have never been brought together in any formal way, nor have they been subjected to an analysis which seeks to assess their relative importance. This paper seeks to carry out such an analysis by use of an econometric model and a simulation technique which to a statistician might be called a dynamic analysis of variance, while to a historian it might be called a statistical excursion into counter-factual history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a relatively neglected aspect of underutilization, the declines in output per man that accompany reductions in demand and output. By definition these declines will be called increases in underemployment. If output falls from the capacity level, the decline in output per man is defined as total underemployment.
The purpose of this study has been to provide new insight into underemployment, where changes in underemployment are defined as changes in output per man that accompany changes in aggregate demand and output. The behavior of output per man has been investigated empirically during short periods of sharply declining output. Because of data limitations, the study concentrated on a small sample of manufacturing and mining industries during the postwar period. Within these industries declines in output per man are about twice as important as declines in employment. For all manufacturing, the primary subject of previous studies, the declines in output per man are somewhat less important since there is a pronounced distribution effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses a paper presented by A. Anikin that evaluated the state of the U.S. economy in the 1970s and prospects for its development. Characteristics of the recession; Roots of the economic crisis; Details on the principles of the economic policy of U.S. President Richard Nixon.