Economic problem

Here, to our pleasure and we hope to your satisfaction, is yet another edition of The Economic Problem. Let us begin by pointing out some of its features. The main changes in the book will be found in Part Five, The Major Econom

ic Challenges. Things have changed dramatically, both in economic events and in economic thought, in the three years since we finished the previous edition. New problems have surfaced; some older problems have receded. We have tried, as be fore, to write chapters that would resist instant obsolescence and this has entailed taking some considered chances about the shape of things to come. As before, however, we have done our level best always to make clear when we are venturing onto unexplored terrain, and when we are expressing our own judgments and opinions rather than merely explaining the consensus of contemporary thought. In our previous edition, the chapters of Part Five were widely regarded as stimulating and instructive. We hope we have put good new wine into these popular bottles.

Part Five aside, we have not made major architectural changes in this edition. Again judging by responses, the basic format of The Economic Problem seems to agree with both students' and instructors' likes. There is, of course, a new broom of statistical facts that sweeps clear many chapters, sometimes forcing changes that go beyond mere "updating." And the experience of the last few years has forced us to review and revise some important matters of substance with respect to certain subjects-money, growth, and a host of problems concerned with finance and in ternational competition.

Nonetheless, the essential framework-the sequence of topics, the level of ex position, the use of historical and topical material, and the perspective from which the economic problem is viewed and judged-remain unaltered. This is, we would like to think, the best edition that we have yet written, and withal a book that is clerly reconizable as the descendant of its forbears, now goiung back six generations.