International trade

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1758394757

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136209

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Taussig, Frank William http://d-nb.info/gnd/120199459

Title:: International trade

Place of publication:: New York, NY

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XXI, 425 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Problems of verification

Collection:: Economics Books

234 INTERNATIONAL TRADE shall be in operation, all others excluded. Therein our situation is unlike that of the chemists and physicists, or that which the biologists have succeeded in attaining within the last half-century. It is essentially like that of the geologists and geographers. These also are limited to the method of observation; they also cannot experiment. The reason for their limitations is indeed different from that which the economist must face. The geologists cannot experiment because the length of time over which their forces operate stretches far beyond the possibilities of man’s operations; the same is true in the main of the geographers. The economist cannot experiment because he deals with human beings, and moreover with human beings in the mass — with large numbers and with mass phenomena. He cannot subject thousands of people to a given set of conditions, rigidly prevent the intervention of any other than the chosen factors, and unconcernedly let the consequences emerge. He can do no more than observe what takes place in the unregulated and changing world of affairs. He must watch with attention the confused march of events, discern the significant phenomena among the negligible, and patch together fragments of evidence which, tho they may tend to confirm a hypothesis, will but rarely constitute a continuous chain of evi- dence. The same is true of the geologist. He finds strata that appear and disappear, with gaps as they vanish across valleys or are buried beneath mountains and plateaus. It is thru long and patient observation, skilful hypothesis, visualizing of an imagined situation, excision of the accidental and the non-pertinent, that he establishes his generalizations or at least gives them plausibility. Such is the position of the economist, and such are his limitations. With all the refinements of observation which the development of statistical technique may bring, with all the accumulation of data thru economic history and description, the economist’s generaliza- tions can never have the exactness or the certainty which come from experimental confirmation. Occasionally it happens, however, that there is a simple situa- tion: a train of economic phenomena in which one cause alone is in operation, or is so predominantly in operation that others can

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