Anniversaries inspire retrospective reflections. In turn, retrospective reflections frequently generate scholarly publications. I should like to comment briefly on scholarly enterprises recognizing Irving Fisher at three moments in time. Though each is different, each throws significant light on aspects of Fisher's prolific career as well as on the nature of our discipline. The first anniversary benchmark dates from 1937 and marks Fisher's 70th birthday. This took the form of Festschrift entitled The Lessons of Monetary Experience. The 14 contributors, as editor Arthur D. Gayer explained, were aware of the wide range of topics to which Fisher had made original contributions. They had decided, however, that it would be most useful to structure the Festschrift around a single topic of leading importance. In the environment of 1937, the salience of monetary issues was not in doubt. Fisher himself-with his persistent calls for reflation, then stabilization of the general price level-was in the thick of contemporary debate on these matters. So also were the contributors, whose ranks included Marriner S. Eccles, John H. Williams, Alvin H. Hansen, James Harvey Rogers, R. G. Hawtrey, and John Maynard Keynes. The essayists, it will be noted, were not all like-minded. Though they shared high regard for Fisher's contributions to the discipline, few of them were in complete accord with Fisher. The purpose of this anniversary exercise was to stimulate and sharpen professional understanding of problems of first importance to the nation's economic health. In view of the priority he attached to solutions underpinned by scientific findings, Fisher was obviously comfortable with this approach, even though it meant that many of his other career achievements went unattended. A tribute to Fisher of quite different sort appeared in 1967 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. All but one of the essays then appearing in volume entitled Ten Economic Studies in the Tradition of Irving Fisher (William Fellner et al., 1967) were written by members of the Yale economics department. (The exception was centennial appreciation prepared by Paul Samuelson.) The resulting publication was organized on the following principle: authors were to select topic to which Fisher had made an original contribution and to extend the analysis he had offered to embrace the state of the art in the mid-1960's. The broad sweep of Fisher's inventiveness as contributor to the economist's tool kit was on display here. For example, Fellner took note of Fisher's contribution to utility theory and his attempts to devise statistical method to measure marginal utility; Marc Nerlove addressed distributed lags, Fisherian innovation; Richard Ruggles used Fisher's work on the making of index numbers as point of departure; Herbert Scarf examined general-equilibrium modeling with attention to its Fisherian roots; James Tobin took note of the relation between Fisher's theories of saving and interest and more recent work on life-cycle saving and balanced growth; Henry C. Wallich examined contemporary controversies over monetary theory and policy against the backdrop of Fisher's restatement and amplification of the quantity theory. The 100th-birthday volume bore ample testimony to the continuing vitality of Fisher's analytic style in professional discourse. The contrast with the agenda set for the 70thbirthday Festschrift, it will be noted, could not have been more striking. The earlier publication focused on single topic of immediate relevance to policy, to the exclusion of all else. The later publication captured multiple dimensions of Fisher's professional pioneering, with emphasis on his innovations as theorist. These volumes reflected priorities of the profession at the time they were produced. * Department of Economics, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06459-0024.

This paper suggests that management's role in enterprise restructuring and market failures in the managerial labor market help explain important features of the German privatization program. A model of adverse selection based on information advantages for private owners demonstrates how privatization can improve the quality and number of western managers in eastern enterprises. These benefits can increase with the size of the transition. Evidence of management replacement and significant differences between state-owned and privatized firms from a survey of eastern German firms supports model assumptions and predictions. These results suggest the importance of management replacement to successful privatization.

This paper suggests that management's role in enterprise restructuring and market failures in the managerial labor market help explain important features of the German privatization program. A model of adverse selection based on information advantages for private owners demonstrates how privatization can improve the quality and number of western managers in eastern enterprises. These benefits can increase with the size of the transition. Evidence of management replacement and significant differences between state-owned and privatized firms from a survey of eastern German firms supports model assumptions and predictions. These results suggest the importance of management replacement to successful privatization.

After economics was included in the Goals 2000 Educate America Act in 1994, the National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) constructed a coalition of organizations to write voluntary content standards to guide economics instruction in American schools.' The coalition includes representatives from the NCEE and its network of affiliated councils and centers, the National Association of Economic Educators, the Foundation for Teaching Economics, and the American Economic Association's Committee on Economic Education. The goal of the coalition is to write content standards for the teaching of economics in grades 1-12. Such as developed for other disciplines, are not standards in the usual use of the word. Rather than identifying required performance levels on specified criteria, these standards specify the criteria. As such, the standards consist of what economists usually call principles. They are, in fact, the fundamental propositions of economics. To avoid confusion among teachers, however, the standards-writing committee calls these principles National disciplinary content standards are not mandates from the federal government. Rather, they are a resource for states and local school districts, for individual schools, and for teachers, who are responsible for specifying and integrating the curriculum into their schools. Content standards have public-good characteristics: they are nonrivalrous in consumption, and it is difficult to preclude access to them. In addition, their production relies on fixed development costs rather than variable reproduction costs, implying substantial scale economies. To develop similar standards at the state or local level would duplicate efforts. Consequently, there is a case (as is argued in standard 16) for collective provision of national standards. There is a practical reason to develop national economics content standards as well. Without these standards, some states may omit economics from their curriculum entirely. Some may give economics cursory attention, or write vague standards that are difficult to implement, or focus their economics standards on insignificant content. Some curriculum designs may include other subjects (e.g., personal finance, business, or marketing) under the economics rubric, thereby marginalizing economics. Voluntary national standards increase the probability that economics is included in school curricula. Without them, economics risks the prospect of being dropped from the curriculum. Teachers responsible for economics instruction are often overwhelmed when asked to teach a subiect in which they have little t Discussants: Cecilia Conrad, Pomona College; W. Lee Hansen, University of Wisconsin; Robert Highsmith, Pace University.