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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Title:: Static economics and business forecasting / Benjamin M. Anderson, Jr.

Collection:: Economics Books

STATIC ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS FORECASTING Benjamin M. Anderson, Jr. THE economic theorist has devoted himself much too exclu- sively to the laws of completed equilibrium, to static theory so- called, to theory concerned with what prices and costs and the proportions of the productive forces would be if markets were Auid and if industry were in perfect balance. Business fore- casting, on the other hand, has been concerned much too exclu- sively with the sequence and flow of events, losing sight of the goal in watching the motions of the runners. The laws of economic equilibrium have been elaborately worked out in that great body of doctrine which associates itself with the names of Adam Smith and his followers. Landmarks in the history of this theory are Adam Smith, Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, J. B. Say, J. E. Cairnes, Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Wieser, and John Bates Clark. These writers have worked out the laws of prices and costs. They have explained the laws gov- srning the return to the different productive forces, as land, labor, capital, and enterprise. They have explained the conditions governing the apportionment of the productive forces, land, labor, and capital, among different industries, and the conditions under which one or another of the productive forces will be transferred from one industry to another, from one part of the country to another, or even from one country to another. Ideas on these topics which were vague in Adam Smith’s discussion have become increasingly precise and quantitative with the refinement and polishing of the tools of the economist’s thought. And the beauti- ful application of the idea of “the margin,” particularly in the writings of Professor Clark, has made it possible to indicate not merely the conditions under which capital or labor will flow from one industry to another, but also, in principle, very precisely the point at which they will cease to flow. The idea of balance and proportion underlies the whole of the

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