From Dana's Two Years before the Mast, a vast literary audience has read of the activities of Boston hide-traders in California during the 1840's. But Dana's understanding of the business of which he was a small part was far less accurate than his knowledge of ships and the sea. This gap is now filled by Dr. Fritzsche's analysis of the mechanics and profitability of the trade.

In the manner of the Creole tradesmen of Louisiana, whose lagniappe to their patrons is legendary, the Editor offers a similar bonus to readers of the Review. Instead of trifling presents added to a purchase, however, our lagniappe will be notes and documents illustrative of the evolution of business enterprise.

In response to crisis conditions, and for eight months during 1895, the American government subcontracted its responsibility for the maintenance of monetary stability to a private syndicate of businessmen. This action and its results challenged both political and economic orthodoxy and represent one of the most important episodes in government-business relations during the nineteenth century. While previous studies of the Morgan-Belmont syndicate have emphasized its political and social costs, Professor Simon's concerns are to clarify and weigh the economic benefits of this remarkable arrangement.

This paper presents the results of a simulation study of the dynamic characteristics of the model built by Professor Chow whose purpose was to study statistically the relevance of the multiplier, accelerator, and liquidity preference as determinants of the national income of the United States.

This is an exploratory paper. In particular, it consists of explorations conducted around some of the possibilities that might be offered for capital budgeting via recently developed methods, e.g., chance-constrained programming, linear programming under uncertainty, etc.

In a recent article in this Journal, Jacob B. Michaelson and Robert C. Goshay (hereafter M-G) argue that the rule of maximizing share values does not adequately explain the portfolio selection practices of financial intermediaries. Moreover, M-G suggest that their analysis “has ramifications that reach far beyond financial intermediaries.” In particular, they state that “the asset holdings of conglomerate firms and the rationale for mergers may not be fully explicable in terms of maximizing behavior.”

The substantial growth of the mutual fund industry during the last few years has attracted the attention of students of finance, economics, and public policy alike. Net assets managed by such funds have grown from approximately $450 million in 1940 to more than $38 billion by June of 1966. During 1965 the mutual fund industry funneled some $5. billion of new (primarily equity) funds into the capital markets; more than twice the $2. billion in new equity raised by all non-financial United States corporations during the year. Growth of the industry has not been uniform, however, but has been concentrated among a relatively small number of highly successful funds.

Most businesses sell on credit. To administer credit, such companies set credit granting, term, and collection policies. This article analyzes one aspect of credit granting policy: the determination of the optimal number of credit applicants that should be accepted by a creditor. The emphasis in the relevant literature traditionally has been on techniques for estimating a credit applicant's probability of default and, to a lesser degree, on the decision to accept an applicant given his estimated probability of default. Cumulatively, these two decisions are crucial to any business selling on credit.