Economics: theory and practice

Perhaps no area of knowledge is more vital to the future of society than economics. Any successful effort to extend that knowledge, such as Pro Tessor Ulmer's new text, is highly welcome. Professor Ulmer is unusually well-qualified to make the effort. He has taught economics in our own great universities and abroad. Through his numerous scholarly publica tions, he has contributed much to our knowledge concerning the topics covered in his new text. And as consultant and advisor to many govern ment agencies, he has contributed to the solutions of the economic prob lems assessed under these same topics.

College students are abundantly aware of the fact that most of the con temporary problems confronting mankind are essentially economic in character: the level of employment, the pace of inflation, the plight of the citizens of the underdeveloped countries, monopolistic price-fixing and antitrust actions, wage negotiations and strikes, the population explosion, international tariff agreements, and taxes: all are economic issues featured in headlines in the daily press. But what is not so abundantly clear is that an understanding of the causes and possible solutions to such problems re quires a mastery of certain analytical tools which, when introduced in a general economics course, often seem quite remote from the more inter esting economic policy issues. For example, the concepts of price and income elasticities of demand and labor mobility are essential to an under standing of the United States "farm problem," but their connection is not likely to be immediately obvious to the beginning student in the usual introductory economics course.