ALBERT

Notes: Measurement of the supply and demand relationship, as a technique for studying the prime causes of business cycles. The student of economic instability encounters a double problem: How to enable the businessman to maximize his profit? And, how to insure that profit maximization tends to synchronize supply and demand? This second phase of the problem has scarcely been studied, and could not be resolved with presently available means of observation. Hence, the need for a method to measure the supply and demand relationship.A distinction should be established between two kinds of supply and demand equality: apparent equality, produced by price movements—and real, underlying equality, presumed to result from price movements but much more difficult to verify. This discussion is confined to the real relationship.No one has yet established for certain whether the concept of real equality has any meaning whatever. It needs to be defined. This is the proposed definition: The supply really equals the demand only when the price at which goods sell equals their economic value. That definition is predicated upon the existence of a standard of the economic value of goods. But even economic value has not yet been endowed with a usable definition. It must be defined in terms of production costs uninfluenced by competition on the various markets. This necessitates the assumption of a hypothetical economy. The definition reads: The standard of the economic value of goods is the price at which these goods would tend to sell if they, as well as all other goods, were produced and marketed exclusively to order. By introducing the standard of economic value into the earlier definition of supply and demand equality, one arrives at the formula: The supply really equals the demand only when goods sell at the price at which they would tend to sell if they, as well as all other goods, were produced and marketed exclusively to order.The hypothetical nature of the yardstick proposed here forbids direct measurement of the real supply and demand relationship. Some indirect measurements are not, however, beyond our reach. But, more important than the concrete measurement of any particular real relationship is the abstract measurement whereby the new concept of real equality can be defined in mathematical terms. That definition is both necessary and sufficient to establish the link between prime factors causing business cycles.

Notes: The historian assumes the obligation to make a synthesis of all of man's activities and has therefore a larger responsability than the social scientists in their various fields of knowledge. It is difficult to identify a social science approach to history or a distinctive social science method or procedure. At least the report of the Committee on Historiography which contains a lengthy discussion of the proper method in the social sciences does not successfully differentiate it from the method of the so-called exact sciences. One of the serious problems confronting the historian is how to acquire the best current knowledge available in the social sciences. Indeed to do so necessitates learning the technical languages which have been developed in these complex and rapidly expanding fields of knowledge, especially since one of the languages now regularly employed is mathematics on a higher level than is normally reached by historians. There also remains the more fundamental problem of whether or not the findings and procedures in one highly developed branch of knowledge can be fruitfully or justifiably applied in another field. Disastrous examples to the contrary are easy to locate.Two types of historical problem on which the historian needs and would welcome assistance from the social scientist are (I) what has been the effect in history of the change in psychological experience that occurred when so large a proportion of the population grew up in a one or two child family instead of a five or six child family? (2) What are the changes in political and social history resulting from the fact that so large a proportion of the population are now employees instead of being independent economic units? The danger of social science history is that if abused or distorted it may dehumanize history. There is poetry in life. And the history, or science, that omits the poetry from life is both untrue and dangerous.

Notes: Glerhard Albrecht. Sozialpolitik.Pierre Dieterlen. Quelques enseignements de l'évolution monétaire française de 1948 à 1952. Wirtschaft und Kultursystem.Leonhard Gleske. Die Liquidität in der Kreditwirtschaft.Eduard Heimann. Vernunftglaube und Religion in der modernen Gesellschaft; Liberalismus, Marxismus und Demokratie. The Economic Development of Nigeria.Hans Neisser and Franco Modigliani. National Incomes and International Trade.Hans Peter. Gutachten zu Grundfragen eines Gesetzes gegen Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen.B. Schrieke. Indonesian Sociological Studies.Salahaddin Sözeri. Der Wirtschaftsaufbau der Türkei nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.H.M.H.A. Van Der Valk. The Economic Future of Canada.Walter G. Waffenschmidt. Technik und Wirtschaft der Gegenwart.John P. Windmuller. American Labor and the International Labor Movement, 1940 to 1953.Edward Nevin. The Problem of the National Debt.