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This paper presents Stanford Research Institute's approach to corporate planning and illustrates how it can be applied to international business. Planning is only now beginning to emerge from the status of being an art and to develop into some kind of science. We at the Institute have been in the corporate planning research business for some seven or eight years now, and the approach we take is constantly being modified and improved on. Our format is flexible. It is in reality a philosophy, a basis of logic, that underlies the physical tasks in the planning process, and these tasks vary with the individual company. A rigorous basis of logic is not a mechanical stifler of creativity; rather it is a means of capitalizing on it.

To set the record straight There is no point, a rule as old as Aristotle tells us, in debating a question that can be settled simply by examining the facts. It is ridiculous, in other words, to argue about whether the Yankees won the 1964 World Series. A glance at the record book will settle the matter immediately. Discussion will settle it never.

The Caterpillar Club, the membership of which is restricted to aircrew who saved their lives by using their parachutes, had 40,000 members before the war, and during the last World War another 27,000 names were added to the list. The club is run by Irving Air Chute of Great Britain Ltd., Icknield Way, Letchworth, Herts., who have a reunion planned for the autumn. They are, however, having difficulty in tracing members of the club and so far have only found about sixty, as the addresses are out of date in the majority of the cases.

Suggests that housewives shift brand preferences when confronted with actual price differentials in a market and, irrespective of income or educational levels, react to price cues on low‐priced grocery items. Discusses and compares various studies conducted across varying price differences and consumer stereotypes in the UK and the USA. Reports results of an experiment designed to extend empirical evidence about the relationships among brand preference, perceived quality and price cues. Sums up that this study once again confirms the basic importance of price to housewives.

Under the guidance of General Chairman Leonard F. Buchanan, Vice President and General Manager, Convair Division, General Dynamics Corporation, SAE Activities and Committees have begun planning for the 1978 SAE Aerospace Meeting, November 27–30, Town and Country Hotel, San Diego, California. Abstracts are invited on the following subjects:—

An aggregate production function has been used in macroeconomic analysis for a long time, even though it seems that it is conceptually confusing and problematic. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the measurement problem related to the heterogenous capital input that exists in macroeconomics is also relevant to microeconomic market situations.

The author constructed a microeconomic market model to address both the problems of the measurement of the physical capital and of substitutability between labor and capital in the short run using two types of technologies: labor neutral and labor reducing. The author proposed that labor and physical capital inputs are complementary in the short run and can become substitutes only in the long run when the technology advances.

The author found that even if the technology improves at a fast rate over time, there are then diminishing returns of profits to technology and an upper limit to profits. Moreover, the author showed that under the labor-reducing technology, labor class earns more initially as technology improves, but their incomes start declining after some threshold level of passage of time.

The author cautioned the applied researcher that the estimated labor and capital coefficients of generalized Cobb–Douglas and constant elasticity of substitution of types of production functions could not be interpreted as partial elasticities of labor and capital if in reality the data come from fixed-proportions types of processes.

Although there are contradictory reports in regard to the tinned meat scandal in America, there is not the least doubt that an appalling condition of things prevails, and to the ordinary person who knows little or nothing of the extent to which food adulteration and other such malpractices exist in this country as well as elsewhere, such revelations as those which have recently been made by the daily press must come as a shock. To those whose duty it is to acquaint themselves with the nature and quality of the food supply of the people, the revelations are not so startling. The layman would hardly believe that the cases of obscure poisoning which repeatedly occur, sometimes resulting in death, and sometimes producing more or less severe attacks of illness, are largely due to the use of bad tinned foods. According to various reports from reliable sources, some of the practices in vogue at the Chicago packing houses are too disgusting to be given publicity to, but the malpractices which have been revealed in connection with the manufacture of tinned meat products, such as the use of diseased carcases, filthy offal and sweepings, putrid and decomposed meat artificially coloured and preserved with boric acid or some other chemical preservative, of potted ham made from mouldy flesh, of sausages made from the sweepings of the packing houses where it is the habit of the employees to expectorate freely on the floor, will tend to make people refuse to purchase any kind of tinned food, and unfortunately the manufacturer of good and wholesome products is sure to suffer. As might have been anticipated, denials as to the allegations made have been put forward and circulated, no doubt at the instance of persons more or less interested in the maintenance of the practices referred to. It has been alleged that protection is afforded to the consumer by certain labels, which read, “Quality Guaranteed, Government Inspected,” but it appears from recent official reports that this statement in reality means nothing at all, and affords no guarantee whatever—which is precisely what we should have expected. The absurdity and criminality of permitting the admixture of chemical preservatives with articles of food are well illustrated by these exposures, and we have more justification than ever in asking that our own Government authorities will make up their minds to take the action which has so long and so forcibly been urged upon them with respect to this form of adulteration.

The modern concept of labor hoarding emerged in early 1960s, and soon became a standard part of mainstream economists’ explanation of the working of labor markets. The concept represents the convergence of three important elements: an empirical finding that labor productivity was procyclical; a framing of this finding as a “puzzle” or anomaly for the basic neoclassical theory of the firm, and a proposed resolution of the puzzle based on optimizing behavior of the firm in the presence of costs of hiring, firing, and training workers. This paper recounts the history of each of these elements, and how they were woven together into the labor hoarding concept. Each history involves people associated with various research traditions and motivated by an array of questions, many of which were unrelated to the questions that the modern labor hoarding concept was ultimately created to address.