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:: John Bates Clark as an economist / Jacob H. Hollander

Collection:: Economics Books

JOHN BATES CLARK AS AN ECONOMIST 3 nels of publication, the older group of speculative thinkers to whom the work of Roscher, Cliffe Leslie and Ingram seemed amendatory rather than revolutionary drew to the fore. The impulse took form in the founding of the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1886, with Dunbar’s fine inaugural on “The Reaction in Political Economy” sounding the key-note. It developed as controversial activity centering about the doctrinal contributions of Marshall, Walker and somewhat later of Bohm- Bawerk and the Austrian economists. Exhibiting every variety of intellectual effort from stimulating analysis to hair-splitting dialectic, the results of this sustained contest in relation to Ameri- can economic thought were negative and disjointed. A construc- tive unified philosophy was to proceed from another quarter. Included in the younger group of the so-called “historical” economists were a quota—John B. Clark, Simon N. Patten, Franklin H. Giddings—inclined by habit of mind to deductive reasoning. For a season their studies were integrated. Then related areas drew off his associates while Clark continued to extend his inquiries deeper into the field of economic philosophy. The pace was deliberate and progress gradual. But a succession of journal papers became so many milestones, until in 1899 The Distribution of Wealth summarized with rare amenity of form the speculations of a profound thinker and the lessons of an inspiring teacher. Thereafter for a decade Clark’s doctrines dominated economic philosophy in the United States, yielding only with dawning uneasiness as to the prematurity of speculative inquiries and with increasing resort to realistic studies. This rescue of economic study in the United States from the historical local inquiry into which it threatened to lapse and its restoration to the traditional search for the uniformities under- lying economic conduct seem to me Clark’s greatest service. There may be question as to the full validity of his logical procedure and uncertainty as to the outright permanence of his conclusions. But the history of our science warns off from coun- sel of perfection. “A body of principles grows like a living body; it is not ‘builded as a city that is compact together’ ’—a sage reminds us. What Clark did, as the great masters had done before him, was to face a changed economic world, to slough off the conven- tional formule current in the closet and in the market place

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