This paper attempts to survey some of the more serious difficulties that one encounters in estimating price eiasticities of international trade. The topics taken up are: data availability and their defects, formulae for the estimation, time lags, and structural changes. By examining published and hitherto unpublished studies it is argued that we seem to know enough to be convinced that price elasticities are fairly large, but not enough to be able to indicate more or less exact order of magnitudes. It is also indicated that difficulties encountered in the estimation of effects of time lags or structural changes, are likely to be insurmountable.

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In the chapter 9 in "Das Kapital, " Vol. III, Marx gave the following procedure to transform "value" into "production price"; Wt+1=(1+rt)AWt rt=e(E-A)Wt/eAWt (*) where e=(1, 1, …, 1) and W1t Wt= A=Wnt aij=(Cij+Vij)/Wj0 Wi0=∑jCij+∑jVij+Mi.
W0, Wt denote "value" vector and the t-th "transformed value" respectively. ∑Cij is "constant capital" in terms of "value" in the i-th sector. ∑Vij is "variable capital". Mi denotes "surplus value" in the i-th sector. rt shows the average rate of profit at Wt.
Marx himself showed only the first step by a numercial example; W1=(1+r0)AW0=(1+r0)(C+V) r0=e(E-A)W0/eAW0=∑Mi/∑Ci+∑Vi where C1+V1 Ci=∑Cij C+V= CN+VN Vi=∑Vij.
In this note we show the convergence of Marx's transformation procedure (*); limt→∞ Wt=W* limt→∞ rt=r*

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Dr. Yasuma Takada (or, alternatively, Takata), 1883-1972, is one of the greatest figures in the history of both sociology and economics in Japan. His unique career from sociology to economics fairly predetermines the nature of his economics in its being of much wider scope than ordinarily conceived. Partly because he started his serious, study of economics just when the modern economic theory since the Marginal Revolution began to spread in some quarter of Japanese economists, his contributions to its development in Japan up to the Keynesian Revolution are innumerable. In this article, 3 among them are surveyed as of particular importance.
(I) In several years around 1930, the Walrasian general equilibrium theory rapidly spread among the theoretical economists in Japan in the previous place of Menger, Marshall, J. B. Clark, etc. Though the early and epoch-making contribution in this field was I. Nakayama's article of 1923, Takada was the first Japanese economist who set forth the theory and advocated its pivotal importance in the work of book form, i. e., in Theory of Price of 1930, the 2nd volume of his monumental New Lectures on Economics, 5 vols., 1929-32. By this and successive works in this field, Takada's name will be immortal in the history of the general equilibrium theory in Japan side by side with his juniors, I. Nakayama and T. Yasui. (II) Among the various branches of economics the theory of interest was Takada's starting point and he devoted some 30 years to its toilsome study. Here we would point out the following one aspect that by his continuous emphasis upon the dynamic aspect of the theory, Takada gave the strong incentive for Japanese economists to pay attention to the dynamic side of economics. (III) It is his power theory of economics that is really unique and noteworthy from the present-day point of view. Since his first book on economics in 1928, he ceaselessly and energetically advocated this theory. In his whole system this is a corollary of his power theory in sociology, and in its particular form in economics the central idea comes from the consideration that the wage cannot be explained by the marginal productivity theory alone. His power theory of economics underwent some modifications in his long career both in its relation to the ordinary economic theory and in the positive reason for adopting it. His last position is like this: while the general equilibrium theory is essential as the first approximation to the actual economy, the power theory of economics is the second and more realistic one; and the main, positive reason of its adoption is that without considering the power element in economy the wide-spread and persistent unemployment is inexplicable. He applies this theory to the explanation of the historical sequence of wage level from the subsistence one in the days of the Classical economics. Although his power theory of economics was either severely criticised or simply ignored in his active days, Takada's general idea of introducing the power element into economics is very suggestive and worthy of reconsideration in view of the present situation of economics.

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