The following article presents preliminary estimates of the economic importance of nuclear energy and is part of a study being conducted by the Cowles Commission* at the University of Chicago under the direction of Dr. J. Marschak, and Dr. Sam Schurr. Mr. Menke joined the Manhattan Project as an engineer in 1942, and is now on the staff of the Clinton Laboratories in Oak Ridge. This article has appeared in ECONOMETRIKA and is reprinted by permission of its editors. Minor revisions have been made by the author.

TH:E following note is the result of a study by the Engineering Experiment Station of Iowa State College. It represents an attempt to find the form of the functional relation between cost and output in an electric light and power plant. A broader knowledge of such relations should be useful in discussions of light-plant economics. For instance, the extent to which the rate schedule should encourage consumption increases depends partly on the shape of the cost curves.

Scope of the study, 143. — The sources, 143. — The individual price series, 145. — The Indexes, 150. — Comparison with British prices, 152. — Analysis of divergences, 156.

Reviews the book "Elementary Statistics," by Hyman Levy and E.E. Preidel.

Reviews the book "Audit Practice Case," by Arthur W. Holmes and Francis E. Moore.

PROFESSOR DESPRES' review of Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy in the November issue of this REVIEW presents one of the comparatively rare occasions when an author is justified and perhaps even obliged to take issue with his reviewer. His interpretation of this report is both erroneous and casual; to allow it to pass unchallenged would imply concurrence in an egregious misreading of the report and, much more important, would perpetuate a false interpretation of the German war economy which it was a major task of the report to correct. Professor Despres begins his review with a handsome compliment to the authors for the light they throw on the German war economy. We (and our colleagues for whom we are presuming to speak) are grateful and we shall not be a whit less generous than Professor Despres. He was a leading member of the able group of economists whose advice to the Air Forces it was, in some measure, our task to appraise. It is our conviction -and one shared, we believe, by our colleagues on the Survey,1 -that the economic intelligence developed and the recommendations on targets derived represented a high level of achievement. In challenging Professor Despres' criticism of the report, we should like to be clear that we do not claim perfection for our handiwork. Its shortcomings, however, are not the ones Professor Despres discusses. He taxes the authors with recurrent confusions in economic analysis a blanket indictment which he does not feel obliged to substantiate. We find him guilty of lack of diligence in reading the report and of leaving confusion where there was none before. Professor Despres begins by accepting the central contention of the report, namely, that Germany's economy during most of the war was not in the technocratic state of total mobilization surmised by many foreign observers. The civilian population was not squeezed to the physiologically attainable limit, and the national industrial plant was not exploited to the technical optimum. The fascist political and economic equilibrium was different from that of the democratic countries, yet it was anything but stable there were class conflicts that were bridged but not solved, and divergent interests that were compromised but not unified. This social and political framework imposed insurmountable limitations on the volume of output and on the degree of mobilization.2 A wrong (or naive) theory of the monolithic nature of the fascist state gave rise to an equally wrong notion that the sky was the only limit on Germany's technocratic efficiency. By agreeing on this point, Professor Despres clears the way for his most serious objection. He believes the authors stumbled into a booby trap set up for them by General Thomas when they accepted his view that Germany's preparations were insufficient. A fairly superficial examination of the report (particularly of Chapters I and II) would have convinced Professor Despres of the absurdity of his charge. Germany's war preparations are there described as fully adequate for the kind of a war that Hitler hoped to conduct and win. For a program of aggrandizement based on threats, blackmail, and occasional police action, armament in width i.e., an impressive volume of available arms, exceeding by far the one at the disposal of the Western Powers was all that was needed. The report then makes clear that General Thomas and his colleagues on the General Staff never underwrote Hitler's strat-