Was the second British Empire a customs union?  During the first: wasn't the 1764 Sugar Act inconsistent with a customs union?

RL


----- Original Message -----
From: "mason gaffney" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, 22 March, 2014 2:30:12 AM
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Query

Re Oscar’s query, if he really means “the concept” (and not just the German word Zollverein), most empires of the ancient world were probably customs unions, held together by a hegemon like Rome.  The early classical economists, e.g. Turgot and the Physiocrats, agitated for internal free trade, the original idea of laissez faire.  The French Revolution and Napoleon’s brief empire spread the idea around Europe.  The United (Vereinigten) States was a custom union, with free internal trade and high tariffs.  It was bound by its Commerce Clause, reflecting Turgot’s ideas and also his personal influence on our “Founding Fathers”.  The British Empire was a customs union. Current treaty-making is mostly about the formation and disintegration of customs unions.

 

Mason Gaffney

 

 

From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Oscar Ugarteche
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 7:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Query

 

Dear all

I am working on customs unions and the furthest back I can see is a quote from Simon Bolivar mentioning the concept of the zollverein. Was this F. List's idea or is there an older origin?

Regards

 

Oscar

 

2014-03-20 16:19 GMT+00:00 Thomas Humphrey <[log in to unmask]>:

For what it is worth, Joseph Schumpeter in his 1954 History of Economic Analysis, attributes the aggregate demand concept to Knut Wicksell, and even before Wicksell to Thomas Malthus. On page 623 of his History, Schumpeter writes that "The idea of a schedule of aggregate demand for consumers' goods taken as a whole, though without an awareness of the problem this concept raises, is in Malthus' analytical set-up, and it may be therefore claimed with justice that he anticipated Wicksell, who was the first-flight economist to adopt it."

 

Thomas Humphrey

 

 

On Mar 20, 2014, at 9:32 AM, Steve Kates wrote:





 

The question really is who can take us back before Keynes? So here, from The General Theory page 25:

 

"Let Z be the aggregate supply price of the output from employing N men, the relationship between Z and N being written Z = φ(N), which can be called the Aggregate Supply Function. Similarly, let D be the proceeds which entrepreneurs expect to receive from the employment of N men, the relationship between D and N being written D = f(N), which can be called the Aggregate Demand Function."

 

And then there is this from page 32:

 

"The idea that we can safely neglect the aggregate demand function is fundamental to the Ricardian economics, which underlie what we have been taught for more than a century. Malthus, indeed, had vehemently opposed Ricardo’s doctrine that it was impossible for effective demand to be deficient; but vainly. For, since Malthus was unable to explain clearly (apart from an appeal to the facts of common observation) how and why effective demand could be deficient or excessive, he failed to furnish an alternative construction; and Ricardo conquered England as completely as the Holy Inquisition conquered Spain. Not only was his theory accepted by the city, by statesmen and by the academic world. But controversy ceased; the other point of view completely disappeared; it ceased to be discussed. The great puzzle of Effective Demand with which Malthus had wrestled vanished from economic literature. You will not find it mentioned even once in the whole works of Marshall, Edgeworth and Professor Pigou, from whose hands the classical theory has received its most mature embodiment. It could only live on furtively, below the surface, in the underworlds of Karl Marx, Silvio Gesell or Major Douglas."

 

I have seen the phrase aggregate demand used before that but in a kind of aimless way. But I am interested in its use prior to 1936 as well.

 

On 20 March 2014 23:52, <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Colleagues:

      Who and when was the terms "aggregate demand" and "aggregate supply"
first used?

Robin Neill





 

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