Preliminary versions of some parts of this book came out in various articles published between 1982 and 1985. This holds true for parts of Chapters 2, 7, and 8 (Telser 1984a, 1984b, and 1982a). The material in Chapter 3 is based on a paper presented at a conference at the Hoover Institution in September, 1984, which was published in the conference proceedings (Telser 1985). I presented Chapter 2 at another conference at the Hoover Institution in February, 1986. Chapter 6 is a substantial revision of Telser (1980). Part 1 of Chapter 4 draws on some ideas in Telser (1982b) and corrects some errors therein.

Propositions and lemmas are numbered sequentially in each chapter starting with 1, and by part in each chapter with more than one part. Corollaries are numbered sequentially starting with 1 by proposition or lemma. Equations are numbered sequentially starting with 1 by section.

Sheldon Kimmel has been my most attentive and faithful critic. He has read preliminary versions of almost everything in this book and has saved me from many errors and obscurities. Howard Marvel carefully read preliminary versions of Chapters 2 and 3. George Bittlingmayer and David Haddock read these and some other chapters and gave me many useful comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to Frank Easterbrook, David Galenson, John Hause, Roger Noll, and Daniel Spulber for their helpful comments on various parts of this book.