Philip A. Klein

Leading indicators of inflation in market economies

Abstract Inflation rates are cyclical in major market-oriented economies. Recently Geoffrey H. Moore and Stanley Kaish applied the well-known leading indicator approach to the development of a leading index of inflation cycles for the United States. Their index was based on measures of tightness in the labor market, and a measure of tightness in total credit markets, along with a measure of changes in industrial commodity prices. They found that this composite index reflects changes in inflation rate cycles reasonably well, and that it was more reliable than any of the three components taken alone. The present study broadens their study by attempting to duplicate the leading inflation index for forecasting changes in inflation rates in Canada, the United Kingdom, West Germany, France, Italy, and Japan. In general we find that the leading index is useful in anticipating changes in inflation rates in all these countries with the exception of France and Italy. As such we find that the forecasting properties of this index are often as promising in other countries as they have been in the U.S. Where they are not we conclude that there is a need for further research.

THE INSTITUTIONALIST CHALLENGE: BEYONG DISSENT?

No charge is leveled more consistently at institutionalism (when it is referred to at all) than that it has nothing positive to offer—it is “mere dissent.”

Geoffrey H. Moore and dynamic statistical methods

Abstract Geoffrey H. Moores professional life has been devoted to ongoing research in the development of a variety of statistically innovative techniques applied to business cycle research. His approach is convincing proof that constant reassessment of statistical measures is a prerequisite for improving our techniques for monitoring and for forecasting aggregate economic performance.

Instrumental Valuation in a Democratic Society

There is no area in institutional economics more critical than the approach to value and the valuation process. At the same time, despite the many efforts which have been made to delineate the instrumental theory of value, and despite a common core of views toward instrumental valuation which are not really in dispute, the subject in many ways remains unclear and even controversial. This is particularly true if one attempts to push the implications of instrumental valuation as commonly expressed to their logical conclusion or to apply the theory in new areas. This paper is an effort to make a modest contribution toward clarifying some of these implications of instrumental value.

Forecasting Foreign Trade with Leading Indicators

When the National Bureau of Economic Research began the International Economic Indicator project in 1973 we had two initial objectives. The first was to test the feasibility of employing traditional NBER methods to identify growth cycles in a number of market-oriented economies. The second objective was to see whether the Ieading, roughly coincident, and lagging indicators, which had proved reliable in analyzing business cycles in the United States, would prove equally useful in analyzing growth cycles in the United States and abroad. Our paper at the 1975 CIRE.T meetings in Stockholm, as well as other reports, demonstrated that the NBER indicators can be adapted to both these purposes, and we are now engaged in developing a system for monitoring international instability along these lines. In this endeavor we are cooperating with the OECD in establishing a current data bank which we trust will prove helpful for many purposes in all the countries that ultimately can be included.

MARTIN OPPENHEIMER. The Urban Guerrilla. Pp. 188. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1969.

the historians? The image of growth might be reconceptualized as involving a number of different types of cycle-movements intersecting with each other-the cycles conceived not in terms of substantive stages but as potential trajectories of processes that have a certain internal logic once they are initiated by human acts, but remain constantly susceptible to modification by other concurrent cycles. This book should be read for mental hygiene by all students of social change-in this day perhaps particularly by those concerned with the &dquo;modernization&dquo; of the &dquo;developing&dquo; nations. VYTAUTAS KAVOLIS Associate Professor of Sociology Dickinson College Carlisle