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Peter Temin, Ed., Inside the Business Enterprise: Historical Perspectives on the Use of Information (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991, 260 pp., cloth $43, paper $14.95).
This volume is a collection of six essays and accompanying critiques initially presented at a Conference on Microeconomic History at the National Bureau of Economic Research in October, 1990. As the editor notes in his introduction, the papers are linked by two unifying themes: (1) the pieces are all historical, concentrated on U.S. industry at the turn of the 20th century; and (2) the papers focus on the complexity, scarcity, and mutability of information as the "key element to the functioning of an enterprise."
The list of 13 contributors strongly represents Ivy League universities (6) and M.I.T. Professor Temin's home institution (4). Most are members of either an economics or a history faculty. Though accounting is a frequent theme as might be expected in...