D ISEMBODIED technical progress, output increases realized by reorganization of industry, etc., (rather than increases in factor inputs) and embodied technical progress, output increases realized by improved quality of factor inputs (both labor and capital) are estimated below for the United States, 1929 to 1958, by fitting a total output production function. Disembodied technical progress is measured by shifts in the production function; embodied technical progress is measured by weighting capital and labor input indices for quality changes (i.e., using effective factor inputs). These results represent a synthesis and extension of previous papers by R. M. Solow.'

Michael D. McCarthy, Embodied and Disembodied Technical Progress in the Constant Elasticity of Substitution Production Function, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Feb., 1965), pp. 71-75

ONE of the most important developments in public finance in the post-World War II period has been the great growth of state and local government debt. From a level of $15,900,000,000 in fiscal 1946, state and local government gross debt outstanding has more than quadrupled, to $69,800,000,000 in fiscal 1960.' This study is concerned with the factors affecting the volume and timing of state and local government new debt issues.2 An attempt is made here to develop comprehensive econometric models explaining post-war state government and local government new debt patterns. While in most studies of municipal debt no distinction is made between state governments and local governments, respectively, in the present study it was found that such a distinction is crucial to an adequate comprehension of the factors affecting the new debt issues. Therefore, the next two sections are devoted to separate analyses of state debt and local debt.

PROFESSORS Friedman and Meiselman' recently have reported that a simple theory model describes aggregate consumption more accurately than a simple autonomous expenditure model. They believe this result is evidence that the quantity theory is a better description of the American economy than the autonomous expenditure or Keynesian theory.2 If their interpretation were correct, the Friedman-Meiselman paper would be one of the most significant economic studies in many years. But it is not correct. Friedman and Meiselman have represented the autonomous expenditure theory in a very unorthodox form. Their statistical comparisons are extremely sensitive to how the autonomous expenditure theory is represented. Below, I employ a more conventional representation of the autonomous expenditure theory and demonstrate why Friedman and Meiselman's tests are misleading. Further, using this conventional model and some of their data, little empirical evidence is found which favors the theory. Finally some other conceptual weaknesses of the Friedman-Meiselman tests are illustrated. Briefly, Friedman and Meiselman compare simple, partial, and multiple correlation coefficients obtained from the following equations, estimated from annual (1897-1958) and quarterly (1945-1958) data for the United States: C=al+8(A (1) C=a2 +82M (2) C = a3+/33A +13P (3) C = a4 +84M+y4P (4) C = a5 + 35A + 85M (5) C = a6 + 86A + 86M + Y6P (6)

IN recent years considerable interest has attached to economic relations among the nations of the Soviet Bloc. One aspect of these relations which has received particularly intensive analysis has been the terms on which trade has been conducted between the Soviet Union and the communist countries of Eastern Europe.' Dr. Horst Mendershausen, utilizing the now annually published Soviet foreign trade returns, has attempted to throw some light on this question by comparing the average unit values of Soviet exports to and imports from the Bloc and Free Europe, respectively, where the same class of export or import is sold to or purchased from some countries in each group.2 Some of the major results of Mendershausen's analysis for the years I955-58 are as follows: (i) For more than 2 out of every 3 commodities sold by the Soviets to both the Bloc and Free Europe, the Bloc nations have paid a higher average price than the Free European nations. Had the Bloc imported from the Soviets at the Free Europe price, the cost of their imports (of the sample of commodities studied) would have been reduced by the following percentages in the I955-58 period: i6, II, 7, I2. (2) The Soviet import sample is quite small and the results therefore somewhat more tentative. In I955 and I958, the Soviets actually paid the Bloc higher prices for a slight majority of commodities than they paid Free Europe. On the other hand, in I956 and I957, the Soviets paid the Bloc lower prices than Free Europe in roughly 2 out of every 3 cases. The weighted average, furthermore, was very unfavorable to the Bloc in all years. Had they sold to the U.S.S.R. at the same prices that Free Europe did, their receipts (for commodities covered) would have been increased by the following percentages over the years I955-58: I3, 22, 2I, 20. (3) Mendershausen concludes on the basis of the above evidence that the Soviets price discriminate against the members of their Bloc, charging them more for exports and paying them less for imports than they do for comparable commodities in trade with Free Europe. Regarding the procedures which lead to discrimination, Mendershausen concludes: