Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
This paper is concerned with the study of economic activity from two points of view; the first is that of the man of business, and his problem is “Of what use or value is the study of the activity to those who are actually engaged in the activity?” He has continually to grapple with individual and concrete situations and thus feels the clash between them and the abstract general pronouncements of certain economic studies: consequently he is bound to ask whether the latter have in fact any relevance for him at all.
page 152 note 1 Op. cit., Edn. 1, pp. 75–6. Not altered in substance on p. 83, Edn. 2, though the actual wording is changed.
page 152 note 2 Op. cit., Edn. 2, p. 16.
page 152 note 3 P. 94, Edn. 1 (cf. pp. 75–83 and 95, Edn. 2, where the doctrine is not altered).
page 153 note 1 P. 118, Edn. 2.
page 153 note 2 P. 117, Edn. 2.
page 153 note 3 Pp. 121–5, Edn. 2.
page 153 note 4 This view of the nature of economic science is of course not peculiar to him. Professor Pigou's, Economics of Stationary States is confessedly the analysis of the implications of an hypothesis—an hypothesis of a state admitted never to exist (p. 264).Google Scholar
page 156 note 1 P. 152, Edn. 2.
page 157 note 1 The case is not altered if it is maintained that economic “laws” are really expressions of tendencies: “bad money tends to drive out good.” For the assertion of the tendency can be justified only by appeal to either a statistical generalization of past experiences, or a necessary law which produces it because it underlies it.
page 158 note 1 See, e.g., Robbins, , op. cit., Edn. 2, p. 125.Google Scholar
page 160 note 1 For an instance of this, see p. 147 above.
page 161 note 1 P. 106, Edn. 2.