THE SOVIET PATH TO ECONOMIC GROWTH: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Considerable attention has been devoted in the past to the methodological issues involved in the measurement and explanation of economic growth. Following the method pioneered by Denison and applied by him to the United States and Western Europe, comparative studies have been made of various other countries; that for Japan is of special interest. The present paper extends the analysis to the Soviet Union. In order to preserve comparability, the analysis follows the Denison methodology exactly, and compares the results with those for the United States, Northwest Europe, and Japan.     

Opinions on Consumer Issues: A Review of Recent Studies of Executives and Consumers

How do consumers and marketers differ in their views on consumer issues? Have these differences changed over time? In an attempt to answer these questions, this paper compares findings from five major attitudinal studies conducted between 1971 and 1977, which examined the attitudes of the two groups. This analysis focuses on five key issue areas: product quality, advertising, consumer information, perceptions of corporate attitudes and government regulation. Consumers and business executives were found to have wide differences of opinion in all the studies examined. The differences were particularly sharp on perceptions of corporate attitudes and on the need for more government regulation.     

The Boom and the Slump: a Causal Account of the 1990s/2000s and the 1920s/1930s

Not all booms are alike, nor are slumps. The institutions and the shocks are never exactly the same. Yet the late 1990s boom, and its unwinding, strikingly parallel the boom of the roaring 1920s, the deep decline into the early 1930s andonly a partial rebound. Both experiences began with an investment boom, then a downturn in investment while consumption held up. Economic activity closely tracked investment. The realizations of extraordinary productivity gains were present in the problematic and incomplete recovery of the 1930s, which suggests the possibility that return to the medium‐term natural rate of unemployment may be a rather long process. I expect the rest of the decade to resemble the rest of the 1930s – a limited recovery with investment and employment below historical norms.     

Location and Pollution in a Communal Society

The model presented in this paper attempts to explain the recent trend among Australian Aboriginals in remote Australia to abandon large settlements in favour of much smaller decentralized settlements. The model does, however, have implications for modern Western societies. Aboriginals are assumed to like money and non-money income, stability of income, nearness to a place of significance and a low degree of private property rights, and to dislike pollution when interpreted broadly. Each of these determinants of werfare is expressed as a function of location and degree of private property rights alone and a utility function is maximized with respect to these two variables. The impact on the optimal location and property rights decision of a number of recent changes is then considered.