BOOK REVIEW 7^ investment and production decisions, which will ultimately be felt on the equilibrium output and prices too. We wonder if it may not also be suggested that credit availability may directly affect industrial pricing decisions. It would, of course, require the analysis to be recast in terms of oligopolistic structures in the industrial sector, but that might be worthwhile, too. It is possible to argue that in times of more plentiful bank credit, the oligopolistic mark-ups have a tendency to revise themselves upwards. The micro-economics of this is not too difficult to construct, but for this purpose it would be necessary in our view to incorporate into the analysis situations where the banks are not fully loaned-up and the is 'excess liquidity* in the system. Rakshit analyses only situations of credit rationing, but we also have had periods when (he banks have lent less than tlieir potential for sustained periods It appears that during such periods the assurance of loans (which need not be indeed taken) allows oligopolists to raise their prices (which perhaps was being contemplated for quite some time). The excess liquidity may thus be taken as directly inducing oligopolistic price increases, and then as the prices actually rise and transactions demand cash increase, the excess liquidity of the banks may slowly disappear. But the prices have, meanwhile, stabilized at a higher level. A similar point can be made about agricultural prices too, namely, their tendency to rise in times of excess liquidity, and (his, due to speculation. Rakshit has deliberately kept his model clear of speculation in agriculture, as welt as oligopoly in the industrial sector. Both can be fruitfully introduced by future researchers not just to capture an element of descriptive realism, but what is more important, because oligopoly in industries and speculative holdings in agricultural goods seem to be two important purveyors through which the credit situation influences the commodity markets. AMAL SANYAL Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. 1 -See, for example, P Venkataramatah, '* Is Organised Labour Exploiting or Exploited ?** Artha Vynana, Vol. XX, No. 2, June 1978. pp 135-142. 2 For example, Malinvaud refers to the new situation created by high real wages in the West European countries E Malinvaud, The Theory of Unemployment Reconsidered, Basil Blackwcll, 1977