Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The expert on Puerto Rico will find very little that is new in Factories and Food Stamps and much that is frustrating. Weisskoff, whose articles have made a genuine and lasting contribution to our understanding of the intricacies and contradictions of the Puerto Rican economy, has now written a polemical book that does justice neither to his abilities nor to his argument, so passionately put forward here. At times his presentation is excessively simplistic for the specialist audience; at other times, complicated matters are skimmed over in a few lines certain to leave the nonspecialist bewildered. Some of the figures do little more than take up space better used for expansion of the text. Given his past empirically grounded and careful statistical analyses, there are far too many instances of qualifiers, such as ``almost all'' or ``very small,'' left maddeningly unspecified. His own model is a black box, and the reader must accept the results without knowing the underlying structure beyond generalities. The best part of the book is concerned with the impact of the food assistance program on agriculture, wages, and employment, though much of that is included in Weisskoff's contribution to Time for Decision, ed. by Jorge Heine (1983).-J.L. Dietz, California State University, Fullerton