Industrial Policy: Conservative, Liberal and Radical Views

Books reviewed in this articles:
Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America
Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, Fiscal 1982 Budget Revisions
Ira C. Magaziner and Robert B. Reich, Minding America's Business; The Decline and Rise of the American Economy
Robert B. Reich, The Next American Frontier     

Supply‐side politics: Circumventing the claims of justice

As Hume says, questions of distributive justice only arise under conditions of moderate scarcity. That in turn suggests that increasing (or proposing or promising or pretending to increase) the supply of goods may be an effective way of circumventing claims of justice. Politicians have not been blind to these possibilities. Attempts at supply‐side solutions to distributional problems are very common indeed across a wide range of policy areas. Having demonstrated that I shall then critique such solutions, showing all the fallacies that may embody. My conclusion is that, while increasing supply might sometimes be an acceptable method of resolving distributional problems, there is a variety of arguably common circumstances in which such strategies are wildly inappropriate.     

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF VARIOUS SAMPLES OF ETRUSCAN BUCCHERO BY X-RAY DIFFRACTION,X-RAY SPECTROMETRY,AND THERMOANALYSIS

In order to ascertain whether the technology of Etruscan bucchero was similar everywhere or showed local variation, a comparative study was carried out on 23 samples of bucchero from different sites. The use of carbon dust as a black pigment in this type of pottery was confirmed in all samples, while the hypothesis of the addition of MnO₂ as a colouring was disproved. Further information on the nature of the basic constituents of Etruscan bucchero was also provided.     

URANIUM VARIATIONS IN A DATED FOSSIL BONE SERIES FROM OLDUVAI GORGE,TANZANIA

Of twelve elements analyzed in a series of bovid teeth from the Olduvai Gorge, uranium is the only element which varies appreciably with the ages of the samples. Uranium concentrations increase at first, then decrease with increasing age, and therefore cannot be used by themselves to obtain absolute or even relative ages of the samples. A model accounting for the behaviour of uranium is proposed in which uranium is absorbed in the samples during the decay of organic material and is lost after this decay ceases. If one accounts for uranium losses, the concentrations of uranium and its decay products may be used to accurately date skeletal material from the Olduvai gorge.