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In this article the data are analysed on strike and normal working durations from three industries – the public school system, electronics, and seaports – over the period 1946 to 1987. The duration of strikes experienced immediately prior to negotiation is shown to have a positive effect on a bargaining unit′s duration of normal working during a current contract negotiation. For all three industries the impact of strike duration was greatest immediately following a strike; the longer the duration of the strike, the longer the ensuing normal working time.

Reports on the role of UK emigrants to the USA in the creation and early development of its public accountancy profession. Explains findings in the context of US public accountancy firms founded by UK immigrants and focuses on the recruitment of qualified and unqualified public accountants from the UK. The study is based on searches of relevant archives in the UK and USA. The evidence reveals UK immigrants played a substantial part in the formation and early development of both public accountancy firms and institutions in the USA. However, the recruitment of immigrants by US firms appears to have been a temporary phenomenon pending the supply of US‐born accountants with suitable training and experience. The firms examined include local and national firms. Subject to data retrieval limitations, a major conclusion of the study is that unqualified immigrants played significant roles in the early histories of firms and institutions of US public accountancy.

Data are analysed on strike and normal working durations from three professions – the public school system, electronics, and seaports over the period 1946 to 1987. The duration of strikes experienced immediately prior to negotiation is shown to have a positive effect on a bargaining unit′s duration of normal working during a current contract negotiation. For all three professions, the primary finding of this study is that longer duration strikes in time t produce longer normal working time at time t + 1.

The original concepts and methodology for this study were invented and developed in January, 1973, with the assistance and guidance of D Stuart Conger, Vernon Mullen, Glen Tippett and James Williams.

This article provides a detailed investigation of how Lewis revisited classical and Marxian concepts such as productive/unproductive labor, economic surplus, subsistence wages, reserve army, and capital accumulation in his investigation of economic development. The Lewis 1954 development model is compared to other models advanced at the time by Harrod, Domar, Swan, Kaldor, Solow, von Neumann, Nurkse, Rosenstein-Rodan, Myint, and others. Lewis applied the notion of economic duality to open and closed economies.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Certain elements of Hayek’s work are prominent precursors to the modern field of complex adaptive systems, including his ideas on spontaneous order, his focus on market processes, his contrast between designing and gardening, and his own framing of complex systems. Conceptually, he was well ahead of his time, prescient in his formulation of novel ways to think about economies and societies. Technically, the fact that he did not mathematically formalize most of the notions he developed makes his insights hard to incorporate unambiguously into models. However, because so much of his work is divorced from the simplistic models proffered by early mathematical economics, it stands as fertile ground for complex systems researchers today. I suggest that Austrian economists can create a progressive research program by building models of these Hayekian ideas, and thereby gain traction within the economics profession. Instead of mathematical models the suite of techniques and tools known as agent-based computing seems particularly well-suited to addressing traditional Austrian topics like money, business cycles, coordination, market processes, and so on, while staying faithful to the methodological individualism and bottom-up perspective that underpin the entire school of thought.