TOT THE LEAST of the problems involved in reviewing the economic history portions of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences [5, 1968] is that of determining which portions properly are economic history. Some items easily fall into that category, but many others having such headings as Economic Thought, Poverty, or Slavery frequently provide interesting material though their contents are largely peripheral. In order to keep this review within reasonable bounds, attention will be confined to items specifically classified by the editors as economic history, with only an occasional glance at tempting subjects technically off limits. Some comparisons with the earlier Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences [4, Seligman, 1930] which appeared more than thirty years ago are especially interesting. This earlier work will be referred to i what follows as the Encyclopaedia; the current one as the International Encyclopedia. In actual fact neither encyclopedia is international in any thorough-going sense. Both are written largely by, for, and about Western Europeans and North Americans. The editor of the original fifteen-volume Encyclopaedia made a courageous though not notably successful attempt to define the The tremendous expansion of the social sciences since that time has made the task of definition even more difficult. So the editor of the International Encyclopedia wisely gave up the attempt and merely indicates that the contents of the present work provide sufficient meaning for the term and the best indication of the expanded scope of the field. The heading does appear in the International Encyclopedia and a subtitle, the Philosophy of Science by Michael Scriven (Volume 14, Pp. 83-90), includes an excellent essay on the social sciences. His perceptive statement along with an unusually provactive one by Jack Hexter on the Rhetoric of History (6,368-94) might well be made required reading for all graduate economic history students. As is often true of general reference works, the reader may find most interesting some of the contributions lying outside the field of his own specialty. The editor makes clear that the International Encyclopedia is designed to supplement rather than to replace the earlier work. He also announces the plan to put special emphasis on method. Success in achieving these objectives, although considerable, varies from one subject to another. A general historical introduction, one of the major contributions of the older work, does not appear in the new one. Substantive historical coverage, especially for the years since 1930, is occasionally sketchy in the special topics. The new emphasis on method provides an attractive focus, though many sections and articles fall short of this intention. In its indexing of topics the International Encyclopedia reflects the uneasy position of

THE POSTHUMOUS DISTRIBUTION of two of Michal Kalecki's last works [3, 1969 and 4, 1971] offers an opportunity to draw attention to the career of one of Poland's most illustrious economic theorists. If Kalecki's formulation of a macroanalytic theory was overshadowed by Keynes in the mid-'thirties, he nonetheless went on to develop it and to make other contributions -both theoretical and applied. In the latter category was his participation in the establishment of the United Nations' World Economic Report. Kalecki's voluntary return to Poland was not uniformly beneficial to his career; there is, unfortunately, ample evidence that any official recognition of his brilliance was accompanied by an overt distrust of his revisionism. The calamities that befell the Polish economy in 1969-70 are ample proof that Kalecki had the rare distinction of being a prophet in his own country. He repeatedly warned Gomulka of the disastrous effects that his economic policy was likely to have. Although he was a Jew, Kalecki was not directly subject to the slanderous official antiSemitic campaigns launched after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. But he personally was greatly tormented by the inequities and the upsurge of forces of retrogression. In 1968 Professor Kalecki retired voluntarily in protest against the dismissal of many colleagues who fell victims to the wave of repression against alleged revisionists and Zionists. Another form of protest was his refusal to publish in his native country. Kalecki was greatly esteemed by the various groups of progressive economists in Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. Also, in the West, he found many staunch admirers of his analytical powers and towering personal integrity. Yet his work has gained in neither East nor West the recognition that it merits. The reputation in the West of Michal Kalecki (who died in 1970) probably rests on his seminal contributions to (1) the theory of economic dynamics and distribution of income, (2) his anticipation and independent discovery of all the essential ingredients of the Keynesian system, (3) his prediction of the regime of the political business cycle, and (4) his development of the concept of general rationing, etc. His contributions to the development of a theory of economic growth and planning under socialism, and to the elaboration of a perspective plan, will probably gain a fifth and equal place in the history of economic thought-and will become just as important in influencing economic policy. (Historical parallels are difficult, however, and this is not the place to make conjectures on the likely impact of theories on policy.) These books bear witness to the clarity of his thinking as well as to the capacity of an adept translator to convey the beauty of his exposition. The study at hand on the socialist economy [3, 1969] reflects Kalecki's first hand knowledge of the realities of planning, the wealth of experience he accumulated as an adviser to the Polish and other governments, and the acuteness of a brilliant theoretical mind. A parallel could, perhaps, be drawn between the development of Kalecki's theory of growth in a socialist economy and the development of his business cycle theory (theory of economic dynamics of the capitalist economy); both were essentially derived from a perceptive observation of economic realities. Kalecki was always primarily interested in and preoccupied with the most urgent problems requiring solution. Kalecki stresses throughout that his work

R. Meager of University of New South Wales reviews “We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance” by Mara Kardas-Nelson. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores how microfinance, the practice of lending small amounts of money directly to people facing poverty, has impacted the lives of borrowers, highlighting the experiences of women in Sierra Leone who took out microfinance loans.”

This is a review article of the book The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, by Joel Mokyr, published in 2002.

The manufacturing sectors of developing countries have traditionally been relatively protected. They have also been subject to heavy regulation, much of which has favored large firms. Accordingly, it is often argued that in these countries: (1) markets tolerate inefficient firms, so cross-firm productivity dispersion is high; (2) small groups of entrenched oligopolists exploit monopoly power in product markets; and (3) many small firms are unable or unwilling to grow, so important scale economies go unexploited. Drawing on plant and firm level studies, I assess each of these conjectures and find none to be systematically supported. However, many open issues remain.