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 69 be cast in static molds: so much is clear at the start. In dealing with questions of utility, sacrifice and efficiency, it will necessarily view society as an organic whole, rather than a mechanical sum- mation of the results of theoretical acts of independent “free exchange.” It will leave room for moral forces and its ideals of value and efficiency will be dynamic and not static. In all this its general point of view will be essentially similar to that exhibited in the Philosophy of Wealth: a study which contains many elements of a true economic dynamics, and stakes out territory which dynamic theory has not yet been able effectively to occupy. But to say in advance that such a study can have no use for the static method of approach or for static pictures as partial representations of reality: this would be premature. In fact, it seems possible to predict that certain elements of statics will find a place, and probably a permanent one, in the actual pursuit of the dynamic analysis. In the first place, the dynamic picture will never, in the nature of the case, be complete. The facts change so rapidly that induc- tion can never hope to catch up, and they are so multitudinous that a complete picture would not only be unattainable, but would hardly help the human mind to grasp the facts, since it would be as complex as the facts themselves. Interpretation means simplification, and economics must always simplify in order to be of any use as a mediating agent between the human mind and the facts with which it deals. One effect of the dynamic approach will be to limit staties again largely to its original prob- lem: that of the forces governing the levels of prices and the shares in distribution. And in this field, the static picture will for a long time, if not permanently, afford an indispensable point of departure, and inductive studies will reveal the effect of the static forces, combined with others suggested by the dynamic point of view. In the realm of price theory, quantitative modifications of the static hypotheses will produce quantitative allowances from the static results, and these will probably always be of use. An interesting example is found in the recent work of Professor H. L. Moore; in which he develops the concepts of partial elasticity of demand, and of a moving equilibrium of economic forces, putting the theories of demand and supply, and the marginal productivity theory of distribution into forms permitting of inductive verifica-

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