Harvard Economic Studies

Susan Houseman’s book presents some of the first hard evidence on the economic effects of providing job security, evidence gathered during the restructuring of the European Community’s steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The author reviews personnel practices by the Community’s leading steel companies, basing her analysis on extensive interviews with employers, workers, and government officials in West Germany, France, Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, and the Netherlands. Drawing on economic theory, she shows that the extent of workers’ rights to job security will affect how an industry optimally adjusts to a decline in demand and to a situation of excess capacity.

Joseph A. Schumpeter proclaims in this classical analysis of capitalist society first published in 1911 that economics is a natural self-regulating mechanism when undisturbed by “social and other meddlers.”

A new Introduction portrays the genesis of this classic and analyzes how its contributions fit into theoretical developments of the last thirty-five years. A new and lengthy mathematical appendix gives a survey of the following post-1947 breakthroughs in political economy, in relation to the methodology of Foundations: linear programming and comparative statics; nonlinear programming, dynamic and stochastic; modern duality theory; the testable content of the neoclassical money model; probabilistic decision making, with new slants on the dogma of Expected-Utility maximizing; and portfolio and liquidity preference analysis by general methods that transcend mean-variance approximations.

Long respected as a classic in Europe, this translation is welcomed as the first comprehensive survey of Swedish economic history available in this country. Herein the late Eli Filip Heckscher discusses Swedish economy from the feudalism of the Middle Ages to World War II socialism.

Carl Kaysen offers a penetrating economic analysis of the issues in the civil antitrust suit brought by the United States Government against the United Shoe Machinery Corporation under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.

Concerned primarily with oligopoly, this work includes a general study of pricing in three different markets—perfect competition, perfect monopoly, and imperfect competition. The solutions of these markets offered by Cournot, Smithies, Chamberlin, Stackelberg, Fellner, and Robinson are presented mathematically, followed by the author’s own version of the theory of rational pricing in oligopoly.

This comprehensive discussion of international trade theories focuses on logically distinct models of international trade rather than on chronology or “schools of thought.” The author gives primary attention to the differences in the empirical implications derivable from the “Heckscher-Ohlin model” and from the simple classical comparative models of international trade. He also emphasizes the recurrence of controversy over matters of aggregation, due to the lack of a common criterion, and the rich variety of model types that result from dynamic theorizing, discrediting the search for an ultimate dynamic international trade model.

How much does a country’s commercial policy affect its economic efficiency? How would free trade change the structure of a country’s economy and foreign trade? William Penfield Travis extends the Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory and addresses it to an empirical study of these and related questions. He argues that trade flows fail to reflect relative factor endowments because protection systematically nullifies their effects, and that therefore protection must be incorporated in any positive trade theory.

Olson develops a theory of group and organizational behavior that cuts across disciplinary lines and illustrates the theory with empirical and historical studies of particular organizations, examining the extent to which individuals who share a common interest find it in their individual interest to bear the costs of the organizational effort.

Martin McGuire has written for the specialist and the concerned layman a highly original and valuable contribution to our understanding of the arms race, based upon economic theory in general and the theory of economic duopoly in particular.

In the first in-depth study of this subject by an economist, Perkins focuses on a major problem—common to all planned economies—that has confronted the Chinese Communists: whether to centralize all controls in the hands of planners, or allow factory and farm managers some degree of autonomy regulated only by the indirect pressures of the market.

This is the first major attempt to estimate what would happen in Canada if all trade restrictions between that country and the United States were removed. Refuting a number of assumptions, the authors find that Canadian industries would benefit substantially, provided they seized opportunities to reorganize for the large North American market.

This unique study determines, by means of rigorous quantitative analysis, how cycles in New England cotton textile profits, output, borrowing, and capacity affected investment—and therefore industrial growth—during the nineteenth century. The firms studied were transitional forms between owner-managed companies and the modern corporation. From primary sources, Paul McGouldrick has constructed standardized balance sheets and income statements for each company year by year. A painstaking comparison with a much broader sample of companies shows that trends and cycles in profit rates for companies studied were typical of the industry.

The early 1900s U.S. saw considerable seasonal variations in the balance of trade, primarily caused by the annual agricultural cycle. This examination of the New York money market demonstrates that the frequent fluctuations in monetary conditions were caused by variations in the trade flows rather than capital movements by banks.

In India the high cost of savings makes the efficient use of investable resources crucial. Robert Repetto’s empirical study of selected Indian development programs shows that efficiency in investment depends largely on the effective management of time and on success in accelerating the benefits of investment projects.

This volume makes available the first English version of L’Économie mondiale et les frappes monétaires en France, 1493–1680, Frank C. Spooner’s original and distinguished contribution to economic and monetary history. Generously illustrated with maps and graphs, and abridged by the author, this study introduces the English-reading audience to the methodological approaches of the modern school of French economic history. In this edition, Spooner covers an additional forty-five years not included in his original work: the period 1680–1725 which marks the prelude to the great monetary reform and consolidation of France in 1726.

The service sector represents a smaller share of the national economy in the Soviet Union than in other countries at similar levels. This gap is found in trade, in private and business services, and, surprisingly, in public administration. Gur Ofer provides a twofold examination of this phenomenon. He uses cross country comparisons to study the “normal” relationships between the size of the service institutions and economic development. At the same time he investigates specific factors operating in Socialist and Soviet countries, thus uniting the special Soviet case with general development theory.

This book examines the economics of multi-plant operation of manufacturing firms in national industries, analyzing the experience of twelve industries in West Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Canada, and the United States.

The safety of the workplace is now a highly visible public issue. Many want tighter regulation to reduce worker risk; others find government intervention ineffective and costly. Viscusi develops a theory of individual responses to job hazards under conditions of uncertainty in this exploration of how well markets for hazardous jobs actually work.

These three elegant essays develop principles central to the understanding of the diverse ways in which imperfect information affects the distribution of resources, incentives, and the evaluation of economic policy.

With the nations of the world becoming more interdependent, it is imperative to take international influences into account in understanding the organization of industry within a country. This book extends the structure/conduct/performance framework of analysis to present a fully specified simultaneous equation model of an open economy—Canada.

A consultant with McKinsey & Co. surveys the international aluminum industry and asks why its various activities are divided among firms in the way that they are. These components include the minding of bauxite, its refining into alumina, aluminum smelting, fabrication, and manufacture of the final product.

This volume presents seven theoretical essays examining the effects of capital income taxation on the behavior of firms. It examines optimal tax design, firm financial policy, and inflation. The essays demonstrate the powerful role taxes play in shaping the behavior of American corporations, and also provide insights into the task of tax reform.

The Law of the Sea (LOS) treaty resulted from some of the most complicated multilateral negotiations ever conducted. Bargaining produced a sophisticated agreement on the financial aspects of deep ocean mining and on the financing of a new international mining entity. Sebenius analyzes those negotiations and the U.S. rejection of their results.

What determines the rate of growth, the distribution of income, and the structure of relative prices under capitalism? What, in short, makes capitalist economies tick? This watershed treatise analyzes the answers to these questions provided by three major theoretical traditions: neoclassical, neo-Marxian, and neo-Keynesian.

This book examines, in rigorous, quantitative detail, the structure of trade between Japan and the United States, tracing the evolution of trade interdependence and the causes of its increasing intensity. It also looks at sectoral differences in interdependence—at the patterns behind changes in the composition of trade and the complex factors that determine how individual sectors of each economy respond to economic change in all the others.

This book assesses the effects of spatially concentrated programs for housing and neighborhood improvement. These programs provide direct assistance to low–income property owners in an attempt to arrest neighborhood decline and encourage revitalization.

Perry Mehrling tells a story of continuity around the crucial question of the role of money in American democracy through the ideas and lives of three prominent institutionalists—Allyn Young, Alvin Hansen, and Edward Shaw.