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 61 develop. When wealth is defined as that which is useful, limited in supply, appropriable and exchangeable, one does not at once realize that the last two characteristics are determined by the law, which therefore decides what shall be wealth, and what shall be the scope of economic study. A static economics may, perhaps, consider that it applies to whatever is appropriate and exchangeable under existing law. And if changes in the law result in broadening or narrowing the range of utilities which may be appropriated and bought or sold, the subject-matter to which the laws of static economics applies may be said to be enlarged or reduced; while the nature of the laws themselves remains unchanged. Thus these laws would be unaffected by such changes. But a realistic or dynamic economics will want to know all about such interesting changes, and will find therein most pregnant implications as to potential changes of the same sort which have not actually been made. Its picture of interests, utilities and disutilities will do its best to be comprehen~ sive, and not leave out any merely because the existing law declines to afford them specific protection. Indeed, interests which the law does not protect will be even more interesting than those which it does, for they will create problems and be the probable focusing points of future changes. The function of economic life is to serve the interests of human beings, so far as they may be served by business processes. Price is one agency for furthering that purpose, and those interests which command a price are the ones served by the system of private enterprise. Some interests are of such a character that they might command a price but do not under existing laws. If we are to judge the effectiveness with which the function is being performed, and the success of the system of private enterprise in performing it, we shall stultify the inquiry if we do not contem- plate the whole function, and include all the interests, whether they command a price or not. Otherwise we prejudge our inquiry by defining the function itself so as to include only that part of it which the particular agency covers. If we see no interests except those which command a price, we are hardly in a position to make a searching scrutiny of the adequacy of price as an agency for the furthering of interests. Thus the theory of inap- propriable wealth * and its twin-concept, uncompensated costs, become an important part of economic dynamics. 1 See The Philosophy of Wealth, pp. 12-15.

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