ECONOMICS: An Introductory Analysis of the Level, Composition & Distribution of Economic Income

By Bruce W. Knight and L. Gregory Hines. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1952. 91 pp. $5.75.

Those who were weaned on Taussig or even Knight and Smith will not encounter in this new text much that will remind them of their "Eccy 1." The subtitle already indicates a basic change in approach and chapter head- ings such as "Economic Stabilization," "Economic Insecurity," "Democratic Socialism (England" and "Autocratic Socialism (Russia)" reflect the broadened scope of the field. Given the several new concepts for explaining the "frictions" which classical theory so conveniently ignored and the vast body of statistics now available, the writing of a balanced economics text for undergraduates has become a truly formidable task.

Professors Knight and Hines have so organized the bewildering mass of material that the newcomer, instead of being lost in a maze, is given a clear analysis of price behavior and the determination of distributive shares in a modern industrial economy. More than that, in so doing they have found a satisfactory answer to the controversial question: "What do we tell the students about Keynes?" The brilliant work of the late Lord Keynes during the thirties, which forced a thorough reappraisal of many economic tenets, has not yet been accepted everywhere as "fit and proper for the undergraduate mind." To the great credit of the authors, they neither run away from the Keynesian lion nor sacrifice themselves as lambs on the altar of "The New Economics." No less notable is their skill in integrating national income analysis with the main body of economic principles.

We can all be glad that Bruce Knight decided to enter the lists again and that he has found in Gregory Hines a colleague who shares his zeal for pressing the attack on halftruths and shibboleths.