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ABOUT ten years ago in the United States oils of the “detergent” type had come into rather general use for some diesel engine operation because they permitted longer periods of satisfactory operation than could be obtained with plain mineral oils. Since that time accumulated research and field service have shown that “detergent” type oils could be utilized to advantage and their field of use has broadened. How then can they be defined?

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

IN devoting this number of The Library World in the main to county libraries, we shall not, we think, be guilty of producing what the journalists call “stale matter.” There was a time when county libraries appeared to dominate all small meetings of librarians and even appeared to obsess conferences; a new thing always creates in its advocates and workers an enthusiasm which, to some, appears to be out of proportion. We say “appears to be” because many town librarians felt that their own work was being by‐passed and occasionally belittled. Cooler minds, however, realised from the beginning that the first stages of county library development were as acorns from which oaks would inevitably grow. Few movements have the social importance that the county libraries undoubtedly have. Speaking from the librarianship point of view, it can now be said that the county libraries have proved themselves. The service as yet is uneven, as is inevitable; the movement began and grew in times of great stringency; and even those who advocated it, and it may be those who financed it, did not see its full possibilities. Growth will continue and in time the county library movement will be as fully organised as that of the great city libraries.

WE offer our readers good wishes for 1939. We hope that every kind of library may be allowed in peace to pursue its development for the spreading of good reading, to the end that enlightenment and with it wisdom may prevail amongst our millions of readers. We hope too that it will be another year of progress in service, in good and deftly‐employed technique, in the development of the will to make libraries interesting, attractive, useful and indeed inevitable and essential to all men. For librarians we hope it may be a further stage in the promotion of their profession, of growth of their own faith in it, and of increase in the willingness of those who employ librarians in municipalities, counties, colleges and other places to recognize training and service with better pay, prospects and status. We know that appreciation will not give greater willingness to serve; we do know it will give greater happiness.

FINANCIAL fears are only less cruel than those of war, and lead men into extravagances which they would repudiate indignantly in their cooler moments. If the doings of the Economy Committee at Manchester in relation to children's libraries, as described in the article by Mr. Lamb in our last issue, are true, we have in them an example of a kind of retrenchment at the expense of the young which we hope is without parallel and will have no imitators. Some reduc‐tion of estimates we hear of from this or that place, but in few has the stupid policy which urges that if we spend nothing we shall all become rich been carried into full effect. Libraries always have suffered in times of crisis, whatever they are; we accept that, though doubtfully; but we do know that the people need libraries.

A reconsideration of some Austrian work in public finance analysis that is based on a positive theory of the state and its relationship with the market economy is offered. The contributions of some prominent Austrian economists are considered, and how they relate to contemporary thinking in public finance. The two central paradigms of the tax state and entrepreneurship are explored.

At the request of the British Shipbuilding Research Association, an oil mist detector has been designed and produced by the Graviner Manufacturing Company Ltd., 28 St. James's Street, St. James's, London, S. W. 1.

THIS issue of The Library World marks the commencement of a new volume, and we take the opportunity of thanking our many readers for their continued good feeling and support. It is a pleasure to us to record the fact that we are able to enlarge this initial number of the volume and that we feel the time has come when we shall make such enlargement a permanency, without any corresponding increase in the subscription price.

One of the main theories regarding the relationship between government expenditure and gross domestic product (GDP) is Wagner’s law. This law was developed in the late-19th century by Adolph Wagner (1835–1917), a prominent German economist, and depicts that an increase in government expenditure is a feature often associated with progressive states. This paper aims to examine the validity of Wagner’s law in Egypt for 1960–2018. The relationship between real government expenditure and real GDP is tested using three versions of Wagner’s law.

To test the validity of Wagner in Egypt, law time-series analysis is used. The methodology used in this paper is: unit-root tests for stationarity, Johansen cointegration approach, error-correction model and Granger causality.

The results provide strong evidence of long-term relationship between GDP and government expenditure. Moreover, the causal relationship is found to be bi-directional. Hence, this study provides support for Wagner’s law in the examined context.

It should be noted, however, that there are some limitations to this study. For instance, in this paper, the government’s size was measured through government consumption expenditure rather than government expenditure due to data availability, which does not fully capture the government size. Moreover, the data available was limited and does not fully cover the earliest stages of industrialization and urbanization for Egypt. Furthermore, although time-series analysis provides a more contextualized results and conclusions, the obtained conclusions suffer from their limited generalizability.

This paper aims to specifically make a contribution to the empirical literature for Wagner’s law, by testing the Egyptian data using time-series econometric techniques for the longest time period examined so far, which is 1960–2018.