The words “collective bargaining” are gaining wide currency in the context of civil service staff relations in Canada. The term, however, seems to mean different things to different men, and is sometimes used to confound the real issues. Thus, if one wishes to resist any basic adjustments in existing procedures for staff representation the words may be given their strictest construction. This suggests collective bargaining as it is practised in private labour relations. It implies a process involving the certification of associations, the signing of periodic written agreements, the institution of conciliation boards and, in the last resort, strike action. On the other hand, if one recognizes the shortcomings in present experience, collective bargaining may imply nothing more than some adjustment of the machinery of staff relations in response to growing pressures for more meaningful negotiations. The point to be stressed is that constitutional democratic government cannot afford to be forced into rigid positions, hog-tied by precise definition and institutional inertia. It must seek accommodation with, and among, the many interests that exert their pressures within a given community and it must do so in a way that is consistent with the general climate of opinion and expectation.

This paper is an attempt to give the interested economist who is not an econometrician a general picture of some of the developments in the specialized field of econometrics. It is hoped thereby to enable him to see how this field is related to the general science of economics, and how he may be able to make use in his own work of the results obtained in econometrics. The implications of the current rapid innovations in the field of electronic computers are stressed, since these may soon help to produce an ever increasing flow of econometric results.

In an address given in 1897, Alfred Marshall suggested that economics should develop not only as a quantitative science in many of its aspects, but also as a numerical science. Professor Schumpeter, in appraising Marshall's advice, observes that it follows the line of development begun by Sir William Petty in his Political Arithmetick of 1672. Schumpeter came down firmly on the side of this prescription himself. He too emphasized the importance of economics' being able to “figure out results.” Professor Pigou also reveals how Marshall, well aware as he was that much in economics cannot be described by numbers, hoped to see the areas that could be so described brought to the same stage as physics, where the amount of an effect produced by a cause can be estimated by numerical methods, using statistical data.

Any planned growth is embedded in a set of institutions and attitudes which come from the past; in Asia a rich past obtrudes into the present in every aspect of life. One can see the layers of history lying one on the other in both material and mental life, in every field from archaeology to arithmetic, from ethics to economics. There is no hope of doing justice to this past in any summary that can be included here, but it may be useful to frame remarks about the future in terms of a simplified account of the three Asias which this century inherits.

The three Asias of the past. The periods of Asian history are most easily described in agricultural terms: Stone Age shifting cultivation; advanced irrigated rice culture which had spread to most of the more heavily settled portions of the continent hundreds of years ago; plantations established under imperial rule. In recent years all of these forms of agriculture and associated industry have merged into nation-states created since the Second World War.

There is so little agreement concerning theories of political ideology that it may be appropriate to devote some preliminary remarks to the main orientations of recent research. I shall then state the approach to political ideology which is adopted in this paper.

“Political ideology” has different meanings in the two principal fields of knowledge in which it is used: sociology and political theory. The ambiguity which results is the greater because neither of these disciplines has as yet integrated this notion into the main body of its operational concepts. If the Marxist school of thought be excepted, one may well state that the notion of political ideology plays only a secondary and marginal role as a tool of sociopolitical analysis.

Political theorists and philosophers generally view political ideologies as a part of the complex of forces which sustains the political structure or tends to its overthrow. For them, political ideologies are one of the means to power, or, as stated recently by Anthony Downs, of getting votes. This approach is adequate so far as it goes, but in my view it narrows the notion of political ideology to one of its most manifest functions in democracies. Furthermore, most such treatments of political ideology assimilate it to a pseudo-philosophy. When this pseudo-philosophy is considered good, it is said to uplift and educate the people; when it is considered bad, it is held to mystify and corrupt them.

A formal representation of Malthus' views on the short-run expansion and contraction of income and employment, as discussed in the Principles, has not, so far as I know, been published. Aside from any pedagogical usefulness inherent in the attempt made here to do this, it might also be worth while to examine the model with a view to its possible relevance for the contemporary scene.

Malthus' concern with effective demand produced a classification of the major categories of spending which has interesting implications for the advanced, mixed economies of our time.

It will be recalled that his flows of spending are set up somewhat as follows:

1. Consumption by the productive classes, consisting of

(a) spending for necessaries by labourers;

(b) spending for necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries by capitalists.

2. Investment spending (chiefly by capitalists), composed of

(a) circulating capital inputs, mainly necessaries contained in the wages fund;

(b) fixed capital inputs.

3. Spending by unproductive consumers, largely for conveniences, luxuries, and non-material personal services, that is, by

(a) private persons out of rentier incomes (e.g., rents and interest income on the public debt);

(b) government out of public funds raised through taxation or borrowing.

4. Foreign demand.