Economic essays

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Monograph

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

CLARK'S REFORMULATION OF THE CAPITAL CONCEPT 151 capital and income as “modes of measuring” which Hadley had come to believe “is almost as important as the distinction between public and private wealth” * which he had presented in his essay of the year before. This new distinction is, however, certainly more than a mere detail; it introduces into Hadley’s earlier clear and simple thought of capital as the value of rights of individual ownership, a different idea of a stock of wealth ® as contrasted with a flow of wealth. The latter was pretty clearly Fisher's own idea at that time, as appeared in his contemporary articles. In these Fisher presented this distinction between a “stock,” or a “fund,” and a “flow,” or a “stream,” as the one essential test of capital, as he conceived it. He is intent (not as was Hadley) on distinguishing capital as valuation from wealth as objects (for he thinks of both simply as material) but in distinguishing income as a flow of things from wealth as a fund, reservoir or stock of things. There is not a hint in Fisher's definitions that capital consists of “rights” expressed in terms of monetary valuation, or financially, or of its being a sum of purchasing power, a business investment concept. Fisher specifically objects to Clark’s expression of the amount of true capital in terms of price, instead of by physical measurements. However, as soon as he attempts to discuss the percentage rate of flow, he assumes the measurement of both stocks and streams in monetary terms, for in no other way could a percentage appear. Fisher's contrast was that between a stock and a stream of the “very same commodities.” * The present writer soon afterward ° sought to show that this view was untenable in that it overlooked the durative nature of many of the objects comprised in Fisher's material “capital,” and involved the erroneous assumption that all indirect agents eventually appear in substance as direct (enjoyable) goods. However, when Fisher next expounded his definition, though he referred in no way to this criticism, he introduced alongside of the old distinction a new one designed to obviate the difficulty “It would be a more accurate description of this distinction to say, using Hadley’s own phrases: between public wealth as the sum of the “means of enjoyment” or “means of happiness,” in existence, and private capital as the value of individual property rights. Matera objects by Fisher's definition, Nature of Capital and Income, Ps Economic Journal, Vols. 6 and 7, 1896, 1897. A number of references to J. B. Clark’s ideas occur in the three articles. * Op. cit., Vol. 6 (1896), p. 514. * See Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 15 (1900), p. 19.

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