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.

Notes: Das eigentliche Geschäft des Okonomen ist nicht, die miserable Wirklichkeit zu erklären, sondern sie zu verbessern. Die Frage nach dem besten Standort ist ungleich würdiger als die Feststellung des tatsächlichen.Die räumliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft.

Notes: Political Economy—today. While fully appreciating the functions and achievements of pure theory and of econometrics, the writer considers it necessary to bear in mind those elements of our science which the classical economists, Friedrich List and Karl Marx called “political economy”. In agreement with Kuznets and others, he postulates a transition from the theory of the market-economy to an economy which is capable of dealing adequately with the problems of economic growth, and he gives some examples of the functions of a political economy in our day. Reference is made to such questions as development of under-developed countries, the drawing-up of a national economic budget, reform of the international monetary system, and trade-cycle policy (Konjunkturpolitik). Special emphasis is laid on the need to distinguish between a western and an eastern world economy, since this alone makes it possible to comprehend the difference in the division of industry and labour, the difference in general structure and the difference in susceptibility to crises. The writer also draws attention to the political prerequisites of any economic integration of Europe, since this will become possible only if there is retrenchment of exaggerated rights of sovereignty. A return, along these lines, to the principles of a political economy suited to the times is all the more urgent in that, as the writer pointed out in an earlier article (cf. Kyklas, Vol. VIII, 1955, No. 1, p. 1 ff.), we are about to enter upon a new stage of the industrial revolution, and one which is likely to be much wider in scope than even its nineteenth-century predecessor.

Notes: The classical theory of value and price comprises a real sector which determines relative prices and a monetary restriction (the Cambridge equation) which determines the absolute price level. Patinkin considers this system inconsistent because the supply and demand for real goods automatically defines a demand and a supply for money (the “mirror-image”). Patinkin's position is (a) that the system contains, without justification, two monetary equations and (b) that these two are contradictory.It is argued here that neither the mirror-image nor the Cambridge relations constitute market equations in the sense in which such equations apply to commodities. Commodity stocks or flows are desired for themselves and motivate exchange. In the classical system money is not so desired and it does not motivate exchange. The Cambridge equation is a technical restriction having no relation to the demands and supplies of real goods. The mirror-image equation, on the other hand, though it reflects real demands and supplies, is not a behavior restriction at all. Consequently it cannot be part of any monetary theory. Therefore the Cambridge restriction may be superimposed on the real sector without contradiction.,

Notes: A Centennial Tribute

Notes: Burnham Putnam Beckwith. Marginal-Cost Price-Output Control.Kenneth E. Boulding. Economic Analysis.W. H. B. Court. A Concise History of Britain from 1750 to Recent Times.Howard G. Diesslin. Agricultural Equipment Financing.Walter Eucken. Kapitaltheoretische Untersuchungen.Maxime Glansdorff. Théorie générate de la valeur et ses applications en esthétique et en économie. International Economic Papers, No. 4.Jean Labasse. Les capitaux et la région.AndrÉ Marchal. Méthode scientifique et science économiqueKurt B. Mayer. Class and Society.H. Theil. Linear Aggregation of Economic Relations.Knut Wicksell. Value, Capital and RentHerman Wold. A Study in the Analysis of Stationary Time Series.Barbara Wootton. The Social Foundations of Wage Policy.

Notes: W. ABEL, 0. HOWALD, E. LAGLER et H. SERAPHIM. Probleme einer europaischen Agrarintegration. Wien I 953. Verlag fur Geschichte und Politik. 96 p.GABRIEL A. ALMOND. The Apkeals of Communism. Principal Collaborators: Herbert E. Krugman, Elsbeth Lewin, Howard Wriggins. Princeton, N. J., 1954. Princeton University Press. xix, 415 p. f 6.00.Oxford Economic Atlas o j the World. Prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Cartographic Department ofthe Clarendon Press. London 1954. Oxford University Press. 265 p., s. 301-.L. ALBERT HAHN. l/ti'rtschaftsrmlissenschaft des gesunden Menschenuerstandes. Frankfurt am Main 1954. Verlag Fritz Knapp. 280 S. DM 15.-HANS HANDSCHIN. Der Verband schweizerischer Konsurnvereine (VSK) z890-rg53. (Genossenschaften in aller Welt, Bd. 2, hg. vom Verband schweiz. Konsumvereine.) Base1 I 954. 357 S.EDUARD HEIMANN. Wirtschaftsgsteme und Gesellschaftsgsteme. (Veroffentlichungen der Akademie fur Gemeinwirtschaft, Hamburg.) Tiibingen 1954. J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 265 p.Income Redistribution and Social Policy. A Set of Studies, ed. by ALAN T. PEACOCK. London 1954. Jonathan Cape. 296 p. s. 25/-.JEAN MARCHAL. Deux essais sur le marxisme. Paris 1955. Editions M.-Th. Gtnin, Librairie de Mtdicis. 264 p. ffr. 750.JEAN MARCHAL. Deux essais sur le marxisme. Paris 1955. Editions M.-Th. Gtnin, Librairie de Mtdicis. 264 p. ffr. 750.JEAN MARCHAL. Deux essais sur le marxisme. Paris 1955. Editions M.-Th. Gtnin, Librairie de Mtdicis. 264 p. ffr. 750.HANS RITSCHL. Die Grundlagen der Wirtschaftsordnung. Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Lehre von der Wirtschaftsordnung. (Veroffentlichungen der Akademie fur Gemeinwirtschaft, Hamburg). Tubingen 1954. J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 184 S. Brosch. DM I I.-, Lw. DM 14.-.