David McCord Wright

America and Europe

When one is discussing among friends the subject of Anglo-American relations, it is tempting to escape into a few innocuous remarks about ‘blood being thicker than water’, pad with some humorous stories, and let the matter stand at that. But I feel sure that we must make a more serious effort to achieve understanding. And we do not understand a person’s ideas until we know why he has them. So what I want to do briefly here is not so much to argue whether American ideas or policies are right or wrong — I don’t accept all of them myself — but to explain why Americans have them.

VON MISES, LUDWIG. Human Action Pp. xv, 889. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949.

Fellner, in agreement with traditional theory, points out that the &dquo;profit incentive is not typically a short-run incentive&dquo; (p. 158). He suggests, therefore, &dquo;substituting for the profit-maximization principle the principle of maximizing the present value of the enterprise&dquo; (p. 162), which, though related, is not identical with profit maximization. With this redefinition in mind, Fellner concludes that &dquo;The framing of monopolistic or oligopolistic business policies from the long run ... point of view is probably largely responsible for so-called price rigidities. It seems very likely that a high proportion of the shifts in the market functions is ex-

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more precise information is needed. This may be a modest result, compared to the vast amount of scholarly work devoted to it. It does not take searching studies to find out that the Department of Commerce data on manufacturing and commercial inventories are not fit for a quarterly breakdown of the national income figures. Indeed, a disproportion between the vast amount of work &dquo;put-in&dquo; by the author and his intellectual output is apparent. MELCHIOR PALYI