ECONOMICA.

This section presents abstracts of articles on economics and other related topics published in the May 1965 issue of the journal Economica. The article Adam Smith on the Division of Labour: Two Views or One?, by Nathan Rosenberg attempts to demonstrate that Smith's handling of the consequences of a growing division of labor was in fact substantially free of the contradictions which have often been attributed to it. But more important, it attempts to show that there is embedded in Smiths' writing a fairly sophisticated and hitherto unnoticed analysis of the determinants of inventive activity. Inventive activity is itself envisaged by Smith as a specialised activity within the framework of a larger social division of labor. Moreover, the paper titled A Dissenting View of Duopoly and Spatial Competition, by Nicos E. Devletoglou develops an operational mechanism capable of questioning the significance of the celebrated Hotelling thesis on spatial competition under conditions of duopoly. Furthermore, the article Size of Farm and Productivity: A Problem of Indian Peasant Agriculture, by Dipak Mazumdar presents a cross-section analysis of data in the recent farm management surveys in India. The data shows that as the size of the farm decreases the amount of input per acre increases, as does the output per acre. An examination of the data shows that this result is mainly due to the application of more labour per unit of land as the size of the farm becomes smaller. The analysis yields the conclusion that the marginal product of labour in Indian agriculture is positive but less than the going wage-rate. The policy implications of the observation that smaller farms are in some sense more efficient are also interesting.