Frivolous academic purchase of the month: W.S. and E.S. Woytinsky (1953), World Population and Production: Trends and Outlook and World Commerce and Government: Trends and Outlook (New York: Twentieth Century Fund).
Maury Obsteld next door says: "Ah! Woytinsky! You going to scan it all in and put it on your weblog?" World Commerce and Government--the smaller of the two volumes--clocks in at 907 pages.
It seemed that I was old enough and it was cheap enough that I deserved my own copy of Woytinsky...
There is one thing that is very sad. The very last page of World Commerce and Government shows that this was a library copy: it was stamped due back into the library by Jan 13, 1956; Jan 19, 1956; Jun 11, 1956; Oct 1, 1959; Jun 11, 1973; Jul 29, 1983; Jun 01, 1992; Sep 1, 1992; Sep 1, 1995. Which library? Harvard's Littauer Library of Public Administration. This is the copy of World Commerce and Government that I checked out the summer after my first year of graduate school, and returned at the end of July 1983. Littauer Library has gotten rid of it, and I now have it.
I hope it wasn't their only copy, but I don't remember seeing two...
As you already know but others may not Wladimir Woytinsky is a significant figure who in the 1930s in his published work and trade union sponsored research in Germany advocated as early as 1931 public works to stimulate the economy. He also had his own version of the Kahn style multiplier that he developed in 1930/31 See Kindleberger's discussion of him in his work on the World in Depression.
Posted by: Harold R.Chorney | March 16, 2009 at 11:41 AM