This book deserves careful study by both economists and statisticians, for it makes an interesting statistical approach to an important economic problem. The problem is that of finding for a given commodity the laws of demand and supply, and hence the elasticities of demand and supply, and the solution involves the ingenious application of correlation, curve fitting, and other statistical devices to price, consumption, and output data for sugar, the commodity chosen to illustrate the method.

The first and fourth chapters have to do with the theoretical considerations relating to the problem, those relating to demand in chapter I and those relating to supply in chapter IV. The nature of neo-classical, mathematical, and statistical demand and supply curves is discussed, and the meaning to be attached to the terms ‘elasticity of demand’ and ‘elasticity of supply’ is explained. Considerable space is devoted to the distinction between arc elasticity and point elasticity, and it is shown how the difficulties arising from the use of percentages in determining elasticity may in some cases be removed by the use of logarithms. Careful consideration is given to the opinions of other students of the subject – Cournot, Marshall, Moore, Davenport, Wicksteed, Auspitz, Lieben, and others – and to the different types of demand and supply curves which these authorities have set forth and discussed.