Economic essays

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Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

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Title:: The relation between statics and dynamics / John Maurice Clark

Collection:: Economics Books

THE RELATION BETWEEN STATICS AND DYNAMICS 51 on the other hand, raises an endless number of problems which the static view leaves out of sight, and calls for justification of one form of an institution as compared to other possible forms, and for a weighing of the interests protected by one definition of rights as against the interests protected by another. Returning to the questions of welfare and efficiency, their early independent character has been vitally affected by two great developments. One is the Benthamite utilitarianism and its natural sequel, the marginal utility theory of value. The other is the development of the search for “natural levels” into a substantially complete static picture of society: one in which “natural levels” would exist, would be stable, would be attained. This hypothetical society has its characteristics and laws of efficiency, and of the relation of price to welfare, and thus statics enlarges its scope and annexes new ranges of problems. The means used to approach the problem of levels of price becomes, as a by-product of its own fuller working out, a source of pro- visional answers to these other questions which were not origin- ally cast in a static mold. Is the static method as appropriate to these other questions as to the original one? Without prejudging this question, for or against, we should preserve an open-minded attitude on it, and be prepared for the possibility of finding that dynamic economics may need to reéstablish the autonomous posi- tion of these various problems. Not a complete isolation, it goes without saying. We should also be prepared to find .old prob- lems taking new forms, and new problems arising, suggested by the new ranges of data which dynamics forces us to consider. 3. The Problems of Dynamic Economics The key to statics, as we have seen, is a problem: that of levels of equilibrium. This is an abstraction based on observation of the relative stability of economic values, and of oscillations whose behavior suggests a normal level toward which the eco- nomic forces of gravity exert their pull. The key to dynamics is a different problem: that of processes which do not visibly tend to any complete and definable static equilibrium. The impor- tance of this shift from the search for levels to the study of processes can hardly be overemphasised; it is not less significant than the change from static to dynamic conditions. It might be interesting to try the experiment of assuming static conditions.

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