ALBERT

Notes: Most studies of international demand determinants have found income to be the significant explainer of variations in both imports and exports, while price appeared to have only marginal importance. The present study deals with exports to the United States from eight European countries and gives support to a rather different conclusion: Two price variables—a price index of imports from a particular country, and an index of general-import prices—were significant and sometimes showed high elasticities. United States national income, on the other hand, was a poor explainer of imports from a country supplying finished manufactures, while industrial output was a fair explainer of imports from the suppliers of raw and semimanufactured materials.Of the two successful price variables, general-import prices showed the higher numerical price elasticities. This fact was contrary to the theoretical expectation, and arguments were advanced for believing that there might be greater downward bias in the direct- than in the cross-price elasticities of demand. It was concluded that in general the higher of the two calculated elasticities came closer to the true price elasticity for the country concerned.However, the findings, if taken at face value, also suggest that a European exporting country may be more successful in gaining dollar earnings at the expense of its rivals than at the expense of domestic United States producers. Elasticity with respect to United States domestic prices was low or insignificant; and total imports showed little price response.If it were in fact difficult for the non-dollar world together or even for Europe alone, to adjust its dollar earnings by means of price, it would still be possible for the countries involved to adjust both their dollar and their overall balances. For to the extent that they reduced prices competitively they would be induced to substitute imports from one another for those from the United States.Finally, if the behaviour of overall United States imports can be taken as typical for manufacturing countries' imports, while particular countries' exports to the world as a whole respond to price much as do those to the United States, we can infer that their balance-of-trade adjustments to price will be mainly on the export, rather than on the import, side.

Notes: Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Change. The formulation of a general theory of the processes of change of social systems is one of the chief tasks of sociology; none of the models of society currently in vogue provides an adequate basis on which such a theory could be built. The structural-functional analysis of social interaction systems is capable of understanding the majority of the various processes which go under the name of “social change” as processes within a (major) social system whose boundaries may be theoretically determined at will. On the other hand a working definition of a sociology of “social change” is suggested, in which the term will primarily refer to processes of transition from one social system to another.An obstacle to a “dynamic” sociology of this kind appears in the form of the conception of social systems in equilibrium. The inadequacy of functionalism lies in its ontological postulate that the final end of a social system is its own existence, which is derived from a false analogy with the biological law of the preservation of the species. This analogy holds good only for one social system in “Society” as a whole; the functionalist approach does not suffice to explain the existence of any particular social system or type of system as a particular case among any number of possible arrangements, each of which may equally well satisfy the basic needs of man.The criteria for the transition from one social system to another must be sought in the change of social structure. Since the notion of dynamic equilibrium always implies processes changing the relative position of units within the structure, “social change” must be viewed as the changing of changing structures with regard to the essential properties of particular structures. The change of power structure in the form of the substitution of one social stratum through another one as the ruling element has inescapable consequences for the structural arrangement of the total system. To a certain extent Marxian sociology offers univocal criteria which permit identification of social change, but the alternation of ruling classes is not the only significant change of social structure one could think of.Social change should above all be viewed independently of culture change. Both concepts refer to the same total reality, but at different levels of abstraction. The problem of determining the boundaries of cultural units is not solved by identifying any particular culture with the behaviour patterns and/or norm systems of given social groups. The concept of an “integrated culture” is as much a theoretical model as a social system in equilibrium. The essential property of cultural unity consists in a definite, existentially coloured hierarchy of values, the “Weltanschauung”, whose change is the criterion of cultural change. One possibility of correlating social and cultural change arises from the consideration of the underlying world view as one among many essential properties of social systems.

Notes: ERIK BOETTCHER. Die sowjetische Wirtschaftspolitik am Scheidewege (Soviet Economic Policy at the Crossroads). (Veröffentlichungen der Akademie für Gemeinwirtschaft, Hamburg). Tübingen 1959. J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 307 S. Lw. 26.50 DM; Brosch. 22.50 DM Aspectos Monetarios de las Economias Latinoamericanas, 1959. (Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latinoamericanos.) México 1960. 328 pp.MORDECAI EZEKIEL and KARL A. FOX. Methods of Correlation and Regression Analysis, Linear and Curvilinear. J. Wiley & Sons, New York, and Chapman & Hall, London, 1959. 548 pp.SANTIKUMAR GHOSH. Inflation in an Under-developed Economy-A Study of Inflation in India. Calcutta, 1959. The World Press Private Ltd. 179+39 pp. Rs. 11.00HARRY W. ZIMMERMANN (ed.), Aspekte der Automation. Frankfurter Tagung der List Gesellschaft (Veröffentlichungen der List Gesellschaft EV, Bd. 16). Kyklos-Verlag, Basel, und J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1960. 409 S.MARIUS HAMMER. Vergleichende Morphologie der Arbeit in der Europäischen Automobilindustrie -Die Entwicklung zur Automation. (Veröffentlichungen der List Gesellschaft EV, Bd. 15.) Kyklos-Verlag, Basel, und J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1959. 80 S. DM 12.-Z. Y. HERSHLAG. Turkey: An Economy in Transition. (Institute of Social Studies, Publications on Social Change No. 14.) The Hague 1958. Van Keulen NV. 340 pp. 55s.HOOVER, EDGAR M., and VERNON, RAYMOND. Anatomy of a Metropolis. Cambridge, Mass., 1959. Harvard University Press. 327 pp.EBERHARD RHEIN. Möglichkeiten und Probleme staatlicher Investitionsplanung in der Marktwirtschaft, dargestellt am Beispiel Frankreichs. (Band 5 der Buchreihe “Untersuchungen zur Volkswirtschaftspolitik”, Abteilung A der Reihe “Die industrielle Entwicklung, Analyse der wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und politischen Auswirkungen der Industrialisierung”, hg. von Fritz Voigt und Karl Gustav Specht.) Nürnberg, Köln und Opladen 1960. Westdeutscher Verlag. 174 S.DANIEL L. SPENCER. India, Mixed Enterprise and Western Business.- Experiments in controlled change for growth and profit. The Hague, 1959. Martinus Nijhoff. 252 pp. hfl. 15.75ERIK THORBECKE. The Tendency towards Regionalization in International Trade, 1928-1956. The Hague 1960. Martinus Nijhoff. 223 pp. hfl. 25.-

Notes: This note is an attempt to offer a quantitatively significant answer to the question: How effective is cost disinflation likely to be in restoring a deficit country's balance of payments equilibrium? This question is occasioned by such recent structural changes in the world economy as to intensify cost-price competition in international markets. In seeking the needed answer, the author has set up a system of equations to describe the relevant domestic and foreign variables affecting a trading nation's balance of payments–on plausible assumptions. The analysis made on the basis of that system leads to the following conclusions:1. If a nation is not a marginal supplier of internationally tradeable goods, the price-elasticity of world demand for that nation's exports is likely to be so far below unity (trend value) as to worsen its balance of payments in consequence of a disinflation-induced fall in its export price, given the constant exchange rates and the constant level of effective world demand.2. If a nation's exports consist largely of capital goods and manufactures, the income-elasticity of world demand for that nation's exports is likely to exceed unity so as to aggravate its balance of payments difficulties during a period of falling effective world demand possibly set off by some other nation's disinflationary drive, cet. par.3. If a nation's cost disinflation increases its innovational investment (designed to increase general productivity), its induced imports are likely to increase via the foreign-trade multiplier and so to offset any beneficial effect that a disinflationinduced fall in the export price might have on its trade balance.4. In sum, the analysis would make it theoretically unsound and practically unwise for any trading nation to place unilaterally excessive reliance on the price mechanism in general and disinflation in particular for balance of payments equilibrium–especially in this day and age of universal wage-price rigidities, income sensibilities and exchange-rate flexibilities.

Notes: ROBERT LORING ALLEN. Communist Economic Warfare. Washington 1960. Public Affairs Press. 250 pp. and tables. $ 5.-ROLF BERTH. Marktforschung zwischen Zahl und Psyche. Beiträge zur Erforschung der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung. Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. M. E. Kamp, Heft 3. Stuttgart 1959. Gustav Fischer Verlag.HENRY J. BRUTON. Nuevas Aportaciones a la Teoria del Crecimiento1. Mexico 1960. Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latinoamericanos. 153 PP.WILLIAM DIEBOLD. The Schuman Plan. A Study in Economic Cooperation 1950-1959. New York 1959. Frederick A. Praeger. 750 pp.PAUL ERDMAN and PETER ROGGE. Die Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft und die Drittländer. (Veröffentlichungen der List Gesellschaft, Bd. 19.) Tübingen und Basel 1960. Mohr (Siebeck). 337 S. Lw. 28 DMRICHARD EVELY and I. M. D. LITTLE. Concentration in British Industry. (The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, Economic and Social Studies XVI.) Cambridge 1960. Cambridge University Press XVI, 357 pp. 55s.PAUL H. GUENALT and J. M. JACKSON. The Control of Monopoly in the United Kingdom.W. FRIEDMANN. Law in a Changing Society. London 1959. Stevens & Sons. 522 pp. 50s.WALTER ISARD, EUGENE W. SCHOOLER and THOMAS VIETORISZ. Industrial Complex Analysis and Regional Development: A Case Study of Refinery-Petrochemical-Synthetic-Fiber Complexes and Puerto Rico; Regional Science Studies. New York 1959. Technology Press of M. I. T. and Wiley. 282 pp.LEIF JOHANSEN. A Multi-Sectoral Study of Economic Growth, Amsterdam 1960. North-Holland Publishing Co.LOUIS LEFEBER. Allocation in Space. Production, Transport and Industrial Location. Collection "Contributions to Economic Analysis", vol. XIV, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1958. 151 pp.E. A. G. ROBINSON, ed. The Economic Consequences of the Size of Nations. (Proceedings 1957 Conference of the International Economic Association.) London 1960. Macmillan. XXI, 447 pp. 50s.PASQUALE SARACENO. Iniziativa Privata e Azione Pubblica nei Piani di Sviluppo Economico. Roma 1959. Giuffrè. 101 pp. L. 600BRIAN TEW, and R. F. HENDERSON. Studies in Company Finance: a Symposium on the Economic Analysis and Interpretation of British Company Accounts. Cambridge 1959. At the University Press, for the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. XX, 301 pp. 35s.