The Economics of Agriculture. By Ruth Cohen. (Nisbet. 5s. 6d.)
Two pitfalls lurk for the undoing of writers on the economics of agriculture—or, indeed, on those of any other particular brand of human activity: on the one hand the lapse into inappropriate technological detail, on the other the repetition of economic generalities no more peculiar to the subject concerned than to any other. Miss Cohen skilfully avoids them both. She uses the ordinary technique of economic analysis, with which she assumes her readers to be familiar, to illuminate first the static problems of agriculture : the size of units, the degree of specialisa- tion, the question—particularly important to agriculture—of joint production, the short-run elasticities of supply and demand ; then the dynamics of 'economic progress as it affects the distribution of resources and earnings between agriculture and other economic activities ; and finally, the nature and effects of Government intervention in the production and pricing of agricultural pro- ducts. Institutional factors are discussed where necessary ; land tenure, credit organisation, and so forth ; but never otherwise than as economically important.
The work throughout is competently done, the complexities of the subject are skilfully unravelled, and one can hardly imagine a better introductory text-book. Though it does not possess the qualities of intellectual stimulus which delight the reader of, for instance, Mr. D. H. Robertson's Money, and treats its subject matter at a level rather more elementary than most of its pre- decessors do theirs, The Economics of Agriculture can hold its own in the famous series to which it is the latest addition.
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