SEMAINE D'ÉTUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L’ANALYSE ECONOMETRIQUE ETC.

wis

example.

I presume education does include science and scientific

research.

DORFMAN

[ am afraid that I think that it would strain the conventional
meaning of « education » to use that word to include science and
scientific research. The promotion of science and scientific research
is, of course, an important function of government. These activities
do have important external economies. The discoverer of an important
 scientific truth cannot usually retain the benefits of his discovery
 even by means of a patent system. This kind of external
economy, however, is sufficiently different from an external economy
 of consumption, as exemplified by the benefits to society of
having its members better housed and better educated, so that it
is best to deal with them separately and not to combine science
and scientific research with education for analytic purposes

MAHALANOBIS

I meant when education is treated as an item of external economies,
 I simply enquired whether science would be included as
an essential part.
Another point on p. 5 is a practical one. In para g I agree that
governments may invest in uneconomic enterprises with the inten:
tion of enhancing the prestige of the nation, which would be undesir
able. Steel plants are sometimes mentioned as prestigeous but uneconomic
 enterprises. Although I have been trying for a long time,
I have not found any adequate discussion of the circumstances in
which the setting up of a steel plant would be economic and proper.
I could well imagine that a very small country like Panama should
not do so. But it would be extremely useful to find out in specific
cases, for example, for Ceylon which has rather a small population

3

Dorfman - pag. 29