I. Introduction, 597. — II. The underlying metaphysics, 600. — III. A notional mechanism for social evaluation, 603. — IV. The theory is utilitarian, 606. — V. The conflation problem, 609. — VI. Specification of the good, 618. — VII. Pluralism in welfare standards, 621.

Introduction: The theory of the accelerator to date, 174. — How steady growth is generated, 176. — Influence of the investment period, 180. — Influence of the income period, 181. — A more general case, 182. — Qualifications, 186. — Price as a stabilizer, 188. — Appendix, 193.

STUDIES based principally on aggregations of income tax returns or SEC registration statements have established the pattern of variation of the average rate of corporate profit according to size of corporation.' It is proposed in this paper to review and interpret the evidence of these aggregations and to explore the additional information that may be obtained from study of the entire distribution of the rates of return, rather than of averages alone. The effect of a tendency of profitable corporations to conceal profits by paying large salaries to management will also be investigated. From this investigation we may conclude that small corporations have greater variability of profits than do large, in two different senses. For any given year the dispersion of profit rate is much greater among small corporations than among large. From bad times to good the profit rates of small and medium sized corporations fluctuate more than do those of large ones. Finally, the small corporations probably misclassify a greater part of their profits as salaries of management, than do large corporations. As a consequence the generalization that might have been inferred from the experience of the thirties, that small corporations earn lower rates of return than do large corporations, is not very reliable, even for the year I937. VARIATION OF AVERAGE RATE OF RETURN WITH SIZE