Sixty Years of Economic Research

For the measurement of real income, changes in the quantities of the principal categories were estimated for the first time and weighted by their importance at fixed dates to obtain the measurement of the change in the quantity of goods and services in successive years. [...] The field the Committee chose was the structure and productivity of the national economy and in particular the way in which wealth is created, the determinants of wealth, a comparison with other countries, and what could be done to accelerate the increase. [...] From the beginning of 1948 the Institute acted as corporate correspondent for the new International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, and compiled and main- tained the British section of an international bibliography of the literature in the fields of income and wealth. [...] Until 1953 the greater part of the work of the Institute had been de- voted to the analysis of long-term trends, and much of the current work in 1953 was on long-term problems through its study of capital and the structure of industry. [...] The purpose of the work on analysis and forecasting of short-period changes in the economy was to build up a body of knowledge about the causal processes and time lags of short-term fluctuations and to systema- tise the forecasts published in the Review.