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Most of the papers in this symposium were presented at a conference on the economics of information held at Stanford in April 1975, under the auspices of the National Science Foundation—National Bureau of Economic Research (four of the papers, those by Heal, Salop, Spence and Stiglitz, had been submitted to the Review earlier, but because of the similarity of topic, are published with the conference papers). The papers, though all related to the problems arising from costly information, are diverse both with respect to the question addressed, the techniques of analysis employed and the particular markets investigated. A basic theme running through most of the papers is that imperfect information alters, in a fundamental way, the conventional notion of a market, with buyers and sellers coming together to trade; in a full information equilibrium there is a single price, markets clear and all individuals and firms view themselves as price takers. The price charged is independent of the quantity purchased. Although the notion of the market-place is often thought of as an idealization, even when there is not a single market-place at which all transactions occur, the economy behaves as if there were a single market-place; this will be true so long as there are some arbitrageurs to make sure that the "law of single price" prevails. Finally, conventional theory has shown that under fairly weak conditions such a competitive equilibrium exists and is Pareto Optimal. Recent developments in the economics of information, including the papers presented here, have shown that ail of these statements are questionable. In the papers presented here, there is not a single price in equilibrium; firms do not act as price takers; prices do more than just clear markets—they convey information; prices charged may depend on the quantity purchased; competitive equilibrium may not exist and may not be Pareto Optimal. The basic character of how we ought to view the competitive economy is altered if we take seriously imperfections of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An area of research in which sociologists and historians would seem to share a rather obvious concern is that of social change. In his presidential address before the joint meeting of the Canadian Historical and Canadian Political Science Association, S. D. Clark emphasized this. "We cannot become students of change," he said, "without becoming historians. It is only by looking at what has happened to societies of the past, and over time, that the sociologist can derive the data on which to build his principles of social change." That is to say that the study of social change requires recognition of processes in time and must deal, insofar as time past is involved, with evidence that is historical. The student of social change must become a historian and the historian, insofar as he is interested in understanding and interpreting general processes, must become a social scientist. When, however, one searches the literature for particular studies of historical social change, one's findings are meager indeed, especially if one's standards, theoretically and methodologically, are reflective of those of contemporary social science, and one's historiographical standards, of contemporary history. If, in addition, one is searching for social change studies of a particular national history, then the material is even more limited. For this reason I have expanded this review, which was originally concerned with the American nineteenth century only, to include two studies of English history, because these two studies include important theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of history and social change in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]