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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
Wars and rumors of wars are always with us. Today, and for the foreseeable future, they include the prospect of heavy enemy attack on the cities of the United States, a prospect which creates problems in public policy never before faced. It is the purpose of this article to sketch some lines of research which will be useful in understanding and dealing with these problems, and which are of a character that can be undertaken by academic social scientists and discussed in public.
1 US Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Atomic Boxmbs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, US Govt. Printing Office, 1946.Google Scholar
2 National Security Resources Board, Damage from Atomic Explosion and the Design of Protective Structures, US Govt. Printing Office, 1950Google Scholar; and Fire Effects of Bombing Attacks (NSRB Doc. 132), US Govt. Printing Office, 1950. US Atomic Energy Commission, The Effects of Atomic Weapons, US Govt. Printing Office, 1950.Google Scholar
3 Capital per unit of output. See Leontief, W. W., et al., Studies in the Structure of the American Economy, New York, 1953Google Scholar, chs. 3, 6, and 7, Appendix I and Table a.
4 See, for example, Breese, G. W., The Daytime Population of the Central Business District of Chicago, Chicago, 1949.Google Scholar
5 See, for example, Woodbury, Coleman, ed., The Future of Cities and Urban Redevelopment, Chicago, 1953.Google Scholar
6 See, especially, the publications of the US Strategic Bombing Survey.
7 The basic conceptions in this field were developed during World War II, chiefly in the Office of Strategic Services and the Board of Economic Warfare for the use of the Air Force. The concepts as such are not classified, and at least one public, though unpublished, account of them exists. This is the doctoral dissertation of Joseph D. Coker, “Economics of Strategic Target Selection,” George Washington University; 1949.
There is also some discussion of the problem in the SSRC-sponsored study by Coale, Ansley, The Problem of Reducing Vulnerability to Atomic Bombs, Princeton, N.J., 1947, pp. 25–36, 102–4.Google Scholar
8 See Leontief, , et al., op. cit., ch. 8Google Scholar (Chenery) and ch. IO (Grosse), and material cited there.
9 The character of a long-run plant cost curve implied in these remarks is one which slopes down to some minimum level, after which it remains horizontal over a fairly wide size range. Such information as is available for the steel, oil refining, electric power, and rayon industries bears out this view of the shape of the cost curve.
10 See Celler Committee Hearings (Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power, House Judiciary Committee, 81st Congress, 2nd Session), Serial 14, Pt. 4a, pp. 413–18, 750–53
11 See Hirshleifer, J., “War Damage Insurance,” Review of Economics and Statistics, XXXV (May 1953).Google Scholar The proposal summarized here corresponds substantially to Hirshleifer's, but differs in that a compulsory program is suggested where Hirshleifer expresses himself in favor of a voluntary one.
12 Hirshleifer, op. cit., says something about both of these problems. His discussion of finance is a good beginning, but more can be said. His suggestion of using fire in. surance premiums as a beginning for the war damage premiums seems inadequate, and more thought on this point is needed.
13 One study which has come to the author's attention is Robert Marden, “The Organizational and Operational Principles of Civil Defense,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard College Library, 1952. There is a Civil Defense Research Association, Inc., in New York City, a private organization which acts as a clearing house for information on the organization and techniques of civil defense.