Search

This paper sets out a simple probability model for explaining locational patterns and trip-making in urban housing markets. As a prerequisite to formulating the model, the classical theory of residential location based on consumer theory is briefly outlined, and the difficulties of using such theory in an operational context are discussed. A more flexible approach, based on certain classical considerations involving rents, travel costs, and incomes is introduced and a model of the housing market is formulated using a probability-maximizing method. The model is then applied to residential location in the Reading sub-region, and tests of the model reveal that its performance in statistical terms is reasonable. In conclusion, certain possibilities for embedding the model into a more comprehensive modelling framework are explored.

Armen Alchian made an important contribution to the analysis of costs and outputs by pointing out fundamental distinctions between rate of output and volume of output.' In the following, a third dimension of output will be introduced which constitutes an extension of Alchian's results in the same sense that his work is an extension of the conventional theory of costs and outputs. Specifically, the following will consider (1) annual volume of output; (2) the rate of production (expressed as an annual rate but not necessarily carried out continuously throughout the year); and (3) the total quantity produced in a batch or lot. For example, a demand of 1,000 parts per year might be satisfied by ten production runs of 100 units each, each one produced at the rate of 10,000 units per year (for 0.01 years). Previously-indeed several years prior to Alchian's presentation-it was demonstrated that lot size analysis could be explicitly introduced into cost theory, thus anticipating Alchian in analyzing the multidimensional character of output.2 In this paper the rate of production is introduced along with lot size analysis and annual volume of output. It is interesting to note that these aspects can be incorporated into a classical short-run long-run framework. Hence one could, under an extremely generous interpretation of the latter, contend that this is "what was meant all along." With reference to this point, however, Hirshleifer contended that his "rather extensive survey of the literature in both economic theory and in business economics has failed to turn up any significant attention devoted to this topic. The distinction between rate of output and volume of output, insofar as effects on cost are concerned, seems not to have been mentioned in such recent works as J. Johnston, Statistical Cost

n/a

RESEARCH Does the student as a consumer receive anything of worth from college science courses? At best, academic scientists only avoid the technical problems of analyzing and testing consumers' goods and busy themselveswith a great show of book-and-monograph learning and abstruseness-with abstract investigations; everywhere, the more abstract the more meritorious. The University of California at Los Angeles finds it possible to allow one of its professors to investigate at the public cost "the Locomotion of Snakes"; Cornell University supported a professor in his investigation of "nearly five hundred specimens of skunks," which resulted in finding that as a result of "riotous living" of town skunks from garbage pails they were somewhat more corpulent than coun193 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.212 on Sun, 09 Oct 2016 04:26:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY try-bred skunks; Smithsonian Institute issued a report telling how "The Bee Uses 22 Muscles When She Stings You." Time and money can be found for thousands of such peripheral investigations as the above, and for elaborate and expensive printed reports upon them, when this country is in the throes of the most terrible economic depression in its history and ten or fifteen million workers cannot find jobs. The scientists and engineers in our state-supported and municipal colleges and universities do not limit their activities to abstract research. Far from it; many (for obvious financial reasons) have given support to the general process of making their school a busy and booming replica of the business world. Most of the less abstract and more practical members of university faculties, especially in the larger centers, are consultants and carry on very remunerative work for industries while posing in the classroom and to the public as disinterested authorities on vitamins, soap, cigarettes, and the nutritional value of bran, milk, carbonated beverages, or bananas. The higher and more remote university authorities are quite evidently doing nothing more than lifting their eyebrows over such matters, or else why would the advertisement of Old Gold cigarettes as the coolest of all those tested by a professor of physics at New York University, or the very recent newspaper advertisement "Victorious Columbia Football Team Trains on White Rose Tea" be tolerated? ATTITUDE OF ECONOMISTS A very few economists have spoken up, but only "in principle," for the rights of the consumer in the economic order. For the most part, as with the best minds in science, the economists are interested only in reporting, with apparent disinterestedness, phenomena long since receded into history (old depressions for example, and the significance of foreign exports in the post-Civil War period), in writing the history of their science and the biographies of their predecessors, and in reviewing with sly and decorous humor the monographs of their institutional colleagues. While events catastrophic to the consumer's interests are taking place under the very noses of the economists, they while away the time trying to fit the events, like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, into a particular and palpab y meaningless theory. Only a handful out of America and Europe have even concerned themselves with con umption problems. Mostly they work in the fields where the big money goes and where important personages move: finance, marketing, foreign trade, taxation, and the stock exchange. One need only cite the unrealistic and feeble actions of the well-wishing and hopeful group of college trained economists-some of the ablest, in the customary sense, that the country affords-in attempting to incorporate some of their social ideas into the NRA. They advise, if and when called upon; they at times beg to be heard-while the business groups demand and achieve the setting up of price-fixing schemes adapted to the income needs of their industry as they see them, and further see to it that wage rates as well meet with their approval; while they use every tactic known to the professional lobbyist to see that their interests are not jeopardized or, as seems now to be the case, so to strengthen their position as to make prices and profits skyrocket beyond all possibility of consumers' paying the bills. But "hire-learning" not only re194 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.212 on Sun, 09 Oct 2016 04:26:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms EDUCATION AND THE CONSUMER mains aloof from giving any assistance to the much despoiled buyer of goods; it actually supports, through the aggressive activities of many departments of business and commerce, numberless definitely anti-consumer courses. Departments of adult education, evening schools, and extension courses are particular offenders in this respect. "Give any course that people will pay for" has surely been the guiding principle, with the result that we find the curriculums of universities and colleges (not trade schools, where the work would be more at home) loaded down with courses in business: business economics, corporate finance, salesmanship, marketing, business psychology, business English-even foreign business correspondence for sales executives. Most of such courses have no place in a rational program of general public education; that is, consumer education. They must be eliminated entirely if students are to leave school with any clear-cut notion about the position they must take in the rapidly rising conflict between consumers vainly seeking for goods of reasonable quality and durability at minimal prices, and producers driving successfully for a larger and larger share of the depressed and dwindling social income. EDUCATION FOR CONSUMPTIVE ENDS The era of expanding production is rapidly drawing to a close. Here and there new business ventures will rise to prominence and then subside, only because our present economic system cannot support the waste that goes into costly and planless speculation. At the moment there is a rising tide of interest and a growing murmur of dissatisfaction at the hopeless position into which the ultimate consumer has been forced by ruthless drives of competitive salesmanship and planless production and marketing. One need hardly expect that the public schools of themselves will take up the cudgels in the consumer's behalf, but, as in similar social revolutions, consumers themselves will in time force consideration of their rights in public education. When that day arrives, science classes will find that testing electric toasters, vacuum cleaners, can openers, household rubber, leather, and paper articles, and analyzing soap, cosmetics, shoe pastes, prepared flours, and baking powders is an integral part of their work; and lo! the educators will discover that the principles and methods of science are not only being taught more certainly and more effectively, but that interest in the sciences-which are now definitely fighting for existence in many schools, against the bastard sciences and pseudo-sciences of the market placewill increase manyfold. Fundamental and valuable household and trade and consumption skills will be revived, and the amateur in this and that will come into his own and acquire the respect hitherto given the boy who "learned to play the saxophone in his own home in 10 easy lessons by mail." In the home, stamp collecting, the accumulation of glass and ivory trinkets on the mantelpiece, and new forms of bridge will give way to small work benches and chemistry laboratories where tooth powder, ink, and floor polish are compounded and made to replace inferior and costly commercial products, a d where commercial products are analyzed and made to give an accounting of themselves, both technically and economically-a synthesis never yet achieved or attempted by the schools. RISING DEMANDS OF CONSUMERS It is to be hoped that economists, students of law, sociologists, and edu195 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.212 on Sun, 09 Oct 2016 04:26:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY cators will take a keener interest in studying and participating in the consumer movement; in the activities of pressure groups to obtain consumer protective legislation; in the utilization of the boycott against dishonest and recalcitrant industry to hasten the coming capitulation of the Government to the forces demanding for consumers a place in the sun and in legislative halls, and in the Government's laboratories for foods, drugs, and household appli

The case against a gross state product series is presented by the Associate Director for Regional Economic Analysis of the Commerce Department's Office of Business Economics (which recently changed its name to the Bureau of Economic Analysis). Dr. Graham, the newest member of this journal's editorial board, also provides some glimpses into the kitchen where his office is preparing new data morsels for regional economists.

The University of Wisconsin's experience with the MBA Export Expansion Program have been favorable. It has been a good supplementary education vehicle for students, participating firms seem to have gained from it, and the faculty coordinator has gained useful insights regarding business behavior.The University of Wisconsin Business School has been participating in the Bureau of International Commerce’s MBA Export Expansion Program since its inception in 1970. This is a report of our experiences with it, and a discussion of some of the issues raised by these experiences.© 1973 JIBS. Journal of International Business Studies (1973) 4, 15–29

University of Oslo 1811 678 12,369 University of Bergen 1946 225 3,046 Institute of Technology, Trondheim 1900 278 2,871 Agricultural College of Norway, Aas 1897 106 411 Veterinary College of Norway, Oslo 1935 43 179 Norwegian School of Business Economics and Administration, Bergen 1936 49 615 State College of Teachers, Trondheim 1922 60 1,122 Independent Theological College, Oslo 1907 9 477 State College for Architecture, Oslo 1965 13 122

BY MID1970, IT WAS CLEAR that the year would not be a banner period for business investment in plant and equipment. Throughout the year, planned expenditure increases, announced in successive reports, became more and more modest. The 12 percent rise from 1969 to 1970 foreseen in some private surveys in the fall of 1969, and the 10 percent increase projected in the survey released by the Office of Business Economics and the Securities and Exchange Commission (OBE-SEC) in March 1970, shrank to 7.8 percent in the June survey, and the planned increase was pegged at 6.6 percent in the survey released early in September. With the price deflator for fixed investment rising at an annual rate of nearly 5 percent during the first half of 1970, the prospect at the beginning of the fourth quarter is for very little, if any, increase over 1969 in real terms. In fact, the deflated total of fixed investment recorded in the national income and product accountsan aggregate conceptually different from that measured by the OBE-SEC survey-indicated that in real terms seasonally adjusted expenditures for the first half of 1970 were below the 1969 average. The aggregate figures hide a good deal of variation among industries. There is a sharp contrast between manufacturing industries, for which a year-to-year rise of only 1 percent is foreseen, and all other industries, for which an increase of more than 10 percent is projected. Public utilities, hard pressed by insufficient capacity, continued in September to project a substantial rise of 16.5 percent-$1.9 billion-but this is slightly less than

The major fault of the current series on corporate profits is the time lag. According to the Commerce Department, the figure for the third quarter of this year probably will not be available until late in January 19611-a lag of four months following the end of the quarter. The lag in publication of information on corporate profits is a handicap to those attempting to interpret current trends in economic activity. Early last fall, some analysts predicted, on the basis of various corporate financial reports appearing in the newspapers, that profits would be lower for the third quarter. However, as this is written, we still do not have confirmation of this judgment, and it is already time to be concerned about what fourth quarter profits will be. The National Bureau of Economic Research includes the series on corporate profits in its latest (1960) group of leading indicators. However, a figure which appears in January and tells us what a leading indicator was doing in August loses most of its value for predicting future trends. It should be recognized that the lag has been reduced in recent years, but it remains greater than that for series with which it is usually compared. For example, a glance at the November Economic Indicators reveals that the estimate of national income for the third quarter has not been prepared because of one missing component-the figure for corporate profits. Total corporate profits are estimated on a quarterly basis by the Office of Business Economics of the Department of Commerce, using data on different industry sectors which are collected from a wide variety of sources. This information is then applied to detailed benchmark data computed by the Internal Revenue Service from corporate income tax returns, the final figure being published as a seasonally adjusted annual rate.

The initial problems in writing the history of a business are similar to those encountered in writing the history of anything else: obtaining free access to all the existing records; determining whether these records are adequate to warrant the writing of a history; and then deciding what one wants to know from the records.

(1957). Economics Study and “General Education”. The Social Studies: Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 115-120.

This paper describes the process of designing and constructing land use models for subregional planning. Several conceptual ideas concerned with the purpose and form of such models are first introduced, and these set the context for a description of a land use model designed for the Nottinghamshire—Derbyshire subregion, an area in central England. As this model has its origins in Lowry's Model of Metropolis , Lowry's model, and various developments of this model in North America and Britain are briefly discussed. A modification of this model is then proposed, and a method for calibrating such a model is outlined. The design of the zoning and information systems necessary to the model, and the various issues involved in defining the model's variables show how the model has been adapted to the Nottinghamshire—Derbyshire subregion. The results of calibrating the model are then presented and evaluation of these results leads to proposals for redesign and further research into the model's structure.

Summary Guessing and deciding on a statistical basis; a programm - address to the general meeting of the Netherlands Statistical Society. There is always a deep and dangerous gap between pure mathematics and any application of mathematics to some part of reality. This danger is essential in the relatively new application of mathematical statistics to social sciences. ‘The observation of (nearly all) social phenomena is unique’1); they cannot be reproduced at will with sufficient accuracy; the recent and very valuable contributions to the theory of sampling are virtually useless in the social sciences. Therefore careful deductive analysis is a prerequisite for any successful statistical investigation in these fields. Some examples are given of erroneous statistical interpretations in business economics, social economics and related subjects especially from recent american publications and suggestions are made for improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to describe certain techniques which have proved useful in the systems analysis of large scale economic systems. A brief historical description of efforts to apply feedback control theory to management and economic systems is presented, which indicates the need for aggregation as a means of reducing the number of system variables to be considered. A transfer function is derived which, for two cases of practical interest, yields a simplified aggregate representation of the behavior of n system microunits. Accuracy of the aggregate transfer function representation is discussed as a function of n and of the bandwidth of input signals. Applications of the method are demonstrated with respect to problems arising in a systems analysis of the U. S. plywood industry.

This paper describes the methods used by the Office of Business Economics, U.S. Department of Commerce, in creating a microdata file for use in estimating the size distribution of income. It explains the techniques of statistical matching involved in merging microdata files from various sources to correct and supplement income estimates in the original field survey (The Current Population Survey) and to incorporate additional information that can be used to estimate items and types of income not contained in the original file.

Even the title of this paper poses a question to those studying business conducted in more than one country because definitions of "international" vary from textbook to textbook, from article to article, from book of readings to book of readings. Besides only a rather vague agreement on the adjective, there is also a vagueness as to the noun. Should it be "business," "commerce," "trade," or "marketing"? The second part of the title does not indicate that there will ever be a precise, acceptable set of terms that will be mandated by an association or group. A progression of terms is set forth, however, that may lead to a somewhat more orderly approach to the problems of the business that moves from strictly domestic activities to the broadened range of business abroad.

Investment is an art! This is not to say that the "system" boys are not constantly at work. Implicit in all plans to convert the art of investment to a science, however, are assumptions concerning the future. The "Dow" theorist assumes that informed groups are able to foresee trends and that changes in direction of movement will foretell future market action. Followers of formula plans assume that future movements of security prices will follow a pattern similar to the past and that the prices of the securities purchased will keep pace with some arbitrarily selected average. The use of investment timing indexes assumes that statistical indicators which have been reliable in the past will continue to be so. None of these plans, of course, solves the intricate problem of the selection of securities for investment.

For the purpose of estimating travel receipts and expenditures, the Office of Business Economics in the Department of Commerce which gathers this data, recognizes three major travel categories: Canada, Mexico and Overseas. Travel with neighboring countries is broken down into short‐term and long‐term travel. In the case of Canada, short‐term travel is that which takes place in less than 24 hours. For the Mexican account, it is travel under 72 hours. The Overseas category is subdivided into four areas: Europe and the Mediterranean, West Indies and Central America, South America and all other countries.