A Practitioner of the social sciences may be forgiven his moments of Parkinsonian cynicism. At such times it seems that “research” in his field consists in the derivation of ponderous solutions to problems concocted solely to exhaust the time available from a growing body of print-minded confreres. Rare or plentiful as such moments may be—and in economics they are not unknown—they do inspire an enhanced appreciation of skillful applications of fundamental techniques to current and important social problems. In the case in point, Hitch and McKean have produced a work whose analytics are basic but imaginative and whose problem area is vital indeed.