Survey of contemporary economics/ edited by Bernard F. Haley

This volume continues the experiment, sponsored by the American Economic Association, which began with the publication of the predecessor work of the same title edited by Howard S. Ellis." Readers of the first volume will recall that the primary purpose of the experiment has been to test the usefulness of a periodic review of devel opments in the different fields of economics. It was quite impossible to include in the first volume a review of all of the fields of specialization that have developed within the broad subject of economics. Hence, en. couraged by the fact that the first undertaking did result in a product generally regarded as useful to the profession, the Executive Committee. of the Association decided in December, 1949 that a second volume, reviewing developments of the past ten to fifteen years in ten additional fields of economics should be prepared. (Even though in the two vol umes twenty-three fields have been treated in this way, there remain some aspects of the subject, such as location theory and social security, that have not been reviewed.)

As in the case of the earlier volume, the primary purpose of this one is to provide the economist who is not a specialist in a particular field with "... an intelligible and reliable account of its main ideas both analytical devices and their practical application to public policy which have evolved during the last ten or fifteen years." In addition, however and here we have departed somewhat from the precedents of the first volume-the ten authors have been asked to include, whenever they saw fit, their own appraisals of the work reviewed, and to indicate directions which, in their opinion, future research might profitably take. Hence it is hoped that the essays in the current volume will make pro vocative reading for specialists in the several fields reviewed, as well as useful reading for nonspecialists.