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From:
[log in to unmask] (Pat Gunning)
Date:
Fri Jul 7 13:28:18 2006
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>From Carl Menger's Principles:  
  
In the early stages of civilization and even later in the case of  
small manufactures, entrepreneurial activity is usually performed  
by the same economizing individual whose technical labor services  
also constitute one of the factors in the production process.  
With progressive division of labor and an increase in the size of  
enterprises, entrepreneurial activity often occupies his full time.  
For this reason, entrepreneurial activity is just as necessary a factor  
in the production of goods as technical labor services. It therefore  
has the character of a good of higher order, and value too, since  
like other goods of higher order it is also generally an economic  
good. Hence whenever we wish to determine the present value of  
complementary quantities of goods of higher order, the prospective  
value of the product determines the total value of all of them  
together only if the value of entrepreneurial activity is included in  
the total.  
  
Menger, Carl. (1981) Principles of Economics. Translated by James   
Dingwall and Bert Hoselitz. New York: New York University Press.    
Originally published in German in 1871.  
  
In the translation, the translators refer to "factors in the production   
process."  
  
It is also worth mentioning that the investigation of words is hardly as   
useful as the investigation of ideas. That Menger understood the idea of   
factors of production in the modern sense of the Austrian theory of   
value and cost or the marginal productivity theory of distribution is   
evident. I did not check Jevons but I must assume that he understood   
these also, as did Walfas. However, one should not homogenize these   
founders of the idea. Nevertheless, there is a definite break between   
the classical economics and neoclassical economics, stemming from the   
notion that the value of various factors in the pure market economy is   
derived from a combination of (1) the utility of the product to the   
consumer and (2) the consumer's spending power. Each of these writers   
implied some version of consumer sovereignty.  
  
The Concept of Consumers' Sovereignty  
W. H. Hutt  
The Economic Journal, Vol. 50, No. 197. (Mar., 1940), pp. 66-77  
  
At JSTOR.  
  
Best wishes,.  
  
Pat Gunning  
  

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