The last seven or eight years have witnessed a renewed interest in the study of macrodynamic models of the business cycle. A welcome result of this has been that authors previously involved in other fields of economic research have also turned their attention to the topic. This seems to be the case with Mohammed Dore, too. In this book, we read in the preface, he attempts to do what no other single book has done, namely, comparatively to evaluate the main approaches to business cycle modelling.
The book -which is divided into three parts -seems appropriately structured given such an ambitious task. Part I contains three introductory chapters, where, among other things, the author explains the criteria used in the rest of the book to evaluate the various models and theories of the business cycle. This part is then followed by two other parts -the first divided into four chapters, the second into five -in which Dore considers two approaches which explain the business cycle in terms of exogenous factors (Part II) and then theories that treat the business cycle as being endogenously generated (Part III).
Part I is very important for the development of Dore's plan. Although Dore believes that his book is more complete than other books recently published on the same or similar topics, it contains parts that perfectly overlap with parts of the previous books. Thus, it is crucial that at least the criteria used for the comparison and evaluation of the various approaches be original and different from the ones utilized in those books. Dore is certainly aware of the problem and, after an introductory chapter (Chapter l), he devotes the remaining two chapters of Part I to the development of the criteria he utilizes to evaluate business cycle models and theories. Derived from von Neumann's work, these criteria are three in number and seem to be well suited to Dore's purpose. According to the first criterion, theories and models must be compared on the basis of the redundant mathematics they contain. The better models are,