Facts for Economists
THIS book is the first to be issued of a series of studies prepared by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. The greater part hasobeen written by Professor Bowley, though he has worked in collaboration with a number of statistical experts who are attached to the Institute. It begins with a discussion of the definition of the national income in the form of an imaginary questionnaire addressed to a number of the " principal authors" who have written on this subject., Professor Rowley remarks drily in his Preface that " A rough computation suggests that the possible alternative definitions would number over 200 milliards, i.e., more than half the number of sixpences in the national income." After this it is scarcely surprising that he should warn his readers that " there is no simple answer to the question: What constitutes national income? and no precise answer to the question: How great is the national income? " The book ends with a bibliography of 46 pages entirely devoted to British and foreign writings relating to the national income. It therefore provides a most useful and compre- hensive source of reference for further researches into this question. Chapter II brings together and analyses the available statistical material concerned with changes in money incomes as a whole and with salaries, in Great Britain, between 1924 and 1938. There is a restrained, but by implication severe, criticism of the " bold hypothesis " put forward by Mr. Colin Clark in Chapter V of his National Income and Outlay. Other sections in Chapter II deal with income derived from agriculture and with its distribution among the different sections of those engaged in that industry, and also -with the numbers of earners in the principal occupations in the country. Chapter III contains a very interesting survey of the results of the Census of Production taken in 1924 and again in 1930, the information so obtained being checked and correlated with the figures derived from other estimates of the national income and the volume of output ; while in Chapter IV a new and original method
put forward for treating the effects of movements of prices when attempting to measure changes in real income.
Much of the information contained in this book has not been available hitherto in a conyenient form, and Professor Bowley and his co-workers have performed a valuable service in making it thus generally accessible. In so doing they have supplied answers to a number of important economic questions which were dependent upon statistical data, and it is a great advantage to have these data provided in the'precise and authoritative manner which characterises all Professor Bowley's writings. He has a wholesome mistrust of brilliant guesswork in statistics, and the results of his calculations are set out with their appropriate margins of error, so that the reader has only himself to blame if he is misled.
This is a severely technical work on a difficult subject. While many of the results will be of great interest to those who are seeking information as to the composition of the national income, only the expert statistician is likely to find himself able to cope adequately with the methods of analysis which are employed here.
C. W. GUILLEBAUD.
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