... a translation of the “Sophismes économiques.” London. Bastiat , Frédéric 1968 . Selected essays of political economy . New York. Breck , Samuel 1962 . Reflections of my acquaintance and association with deceased members of the American Philosophical Society, “Condy Raguet.” Philadelphia...

...,” or the resources freed when trade begins. To investigate alternative quanti- ties of freed resources requires examining alternative initial condi- tions for the level of demand prior to trade. This is what we had in mind-to show that Mill was examining the terms of trade (with spe- cialization...

...”<O (4) The fixed factor, land, is owned by landlords who are never in the labor force, but receive rents rT in the form of the all-purpose consumer good. The labor force consists of day laborers who, for their services, receive wages eT, also in the form of the all-purpose consumer good. Day laborers or their offspring are not permitted to own land, and landlords or their offspring never become day laborers. Since Q is perishable, it cannot be transferred from one generation to another. Therefore, in the two-class economy only landlords can make inter- generational transfers. Mill’s Simplifying Assumptiom Few people like to leave to their children a worse lot in life than their own. The parent who has land to leave is perfectly able to judge whether the children can live upon it or not: but people who are supported by wages see no reason their sons should be unable to support themselves in the same way, and trust ac- cordingly to chance.8 There are two assumptions regarding consumer behavior implied in Mill’s statement. Parents desire to transfer wealth sufficient to 7.If Q were not perishable, capital would have to be added as another factor of production, and the economy would no longer be strictly agrarian. 8.Nil1, p. 289. In further support of the “Protestant ethic” he quotes from Sismondi’s Nouveaux principes, book 111, chap. 3 : “But there is no danger lest the proprietor should bring up his children to make beggars of them. He knows exactly what inheritance he has to leave them; . . . he sees the limit beyond which this division would make them descend from the ranks he himself filled, add a just family pride, common to the peasant and to the nobleman, makes him abstain from summoning into life children for whom he cannot properly provide. ” 114 HISTORY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY ensure that their offspring will be at least as well off as the older generation are themsel~es.~The preference ordering implied by the quote can be represented by a utility indicator of the form : It is assumed that everyone in the economy, landlords and day labor- ers, have identical preferences, and these preferences can be repre- sented by expression 5. The other assumption implied by Mill’s statement deals with ex- pectations. Since everyone uses only his own labor to work his farm in a peasant-proprietor economy, parents are able to determine the future wealth of their children. They know the limit beyond which this division of land would make the offspring descend from the rank which the parents themselves. filled.lo Conversely, in a two-class econ- omy where prices are given by the market, there is no way for parents to determine the future wealth of their offspring; therefore, it is as- sumed that both classes expect prices to be the same in time period T + 1 as in time period T. Although the cost per child in terms of intergenerational transfers is zero for day laborers, since they cannot make XT, U is not zero because they believe that their children’s wealth, eTS1 in this case, will be the same as their own wealth, eT. In other words, WT+l is exogenous to day laborers in any time period and can- not be influenced by any one individual’s decisions. The Stationary Xtate The life cycles of the two classes are as follows. During time period T, day laborers marry, both parents work, receive eT for their joint effort, raise their offspring, and at the end of the time period they disappear from the economy. In time period T + 1, their children re- peat this process. Landlords, during time period T,marry, receive rT without working, and also raise their offspring, but at the end of time period I’,they divide their land between their children and then disap- pear. In time period T + 1, the landlord’s offspring behave in the same manner as their parents did in time period T. Labor is inelas- 9. This type of behavior has been termed by J. T. Rader the “Protestant ethic” in his ‘(Toward a Socio-Economic Theory, ” Washington Univ., 1971, unpublished. 10. Mill, p. 289. This belongs with the quotation in note 8. 115 BUSH 0 POPULATION AND MILL’S ECONOMY tically supplied within any time period ; therefore, the labor force in time period T + 1 is equal to’ the number of children raised by day laborers in time period T. Since land is fixed in sup,ply, the behavior of landlords does not affect prices. In order to examine the dynamic implications of the model, an investigation of the behavior of day laborers is sufficient. The budget constraint faced by day laborers is e~ = CT + NT(WT+I-- e~) + PTNT (6) Note that NT( WT+1- eT) is equal to NET or total current saving of day laborers, which, as pointed out above, is zero, since WT+l = eT. Therefore, equation (6) can be written as LT)= CT + PTNT (7) where f’(L)is the wage rate as a function of only LT.It is assumed that the cost of raising a chil.d, PT, is positive and always the same. The price per child now contains no endogenous component ; there- fore, the comparative statics obtained when (5) is maximized subject to (7) are straightforward. Since (7) contains only one exogenous variable LT, as far as the parents in time period T are concerned, NT can be written as a function of LT: The labor supply determines the wage rate, which in turn determines the number of offspring raised by parents. Since f’(LT)is continuous and since we know from the usual theorems of consumer behavior that NT is a continuous function of eT, the relationship n[f’(LT)] is con- tinuous. It is assumed that NT is a normal good for all values of eT, which implies that the wealth effect 12’ is always positive. In order to ensure that the economy will arrive at the classical stationary state, only three of the above assumptions f’>0, f” <0, and n’> 0 (10) plus the stability conditions that 116 HISTORY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY are needed. Since discrete time is being used, the stability conditions are those associated with any simple cobweb model, and these condi- tions insure...

... outcome is unpredictable before- hand and which is capable of indefi nite repetition under identical condi- tions, at least conceptually” (Chatterjee 2003, 37). The totality of possible outcomes is the outcome space, and probabilities are assigned to vari- ous sets—called events—in this outcome space...

...-conducive; the latter is Neurath s invention and, in his words, [aid] to the vacillating : they only allow for action to be taken under condi- tions of ignorance with no claim to facilitate access to truth. Turk confuses them repeatedly (39, 100, 118, 165). Book Reviews 207 research agendas in the light...

... Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 11 ( 3 ): 431 – 54 . Meardon Stephen . 2014 . “ Negotiating Free Trade in Fact and Theory: The Diplomacy and Doctrine of Condy Raguet .” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 21 ( 1 ): 41 – 77 . Meardon Stephen . 2015...

... every commodity have ‘use value’ and be produced only with socially neces- sary labor time, but also the socially necessary quantity only should be produced. l7 The assumptions are weakened and the equilibrium condi- tions become more complex. The initial definitions of ‘use value...

... who addressed the issue of money against very different world condi- tions and academic tides. Nevertheless, they shared approaches that distinguish them from the orthodoxies of their day; and they are misunderstood by today’s mainstream. Perry Mehrling’s virtue is to have explained...

... Cardozo, Thomas Cooper, and George Tucker; a number of ‘advocates’-Willard Phillips, Calvin Colton, Theodore Sedgwick, William Gouge, and Condy Raguet; a series of ‘agrarians’-Thomas Skidmore, Langton Byllerby, Stephen Simpson, George Henry Evans, John Campbell, and John Pickering; and Henry C...

...)-are very different characters who addressed the issue of money against very different world condi- tions and academic tides. Nevertheless, they shared approaches that distinguish them from the orthodoxies of their day; and they are misunderstood by today’s mainstream. Perry Mehrling’s virtue...

... price equal to money per unit of output, assuming constant money velocity. Inflation is an equilibrium phenomenon caused by increases in money per unit of output. Price controls disturb both these equilibrium condi- tions, and upon removal have no lasting effect on inflation. Rockoff...

..., often in religious terms, Ely was simultaneously employing an economic methodology that served rather naturally as a cri- tique of laissez-faire economics. This was important, and integral to Ely’s ethical agenda, because laissez-faire economics held that the very condi- tions Ely wanted reformed...

... explicitly situated his own research in the line of the work of the commercial forecasters Roger Babson (1909) and James Brookmire (1910), who had started to forecast business condi- tions after the Panic of 1907. The basis of the Babson and Brookm[ire] forecasts is the assumption that the law of action...

..., even though the conditions have not themselves changed. Although a change in perception is a logical consequence of a change in the condi- 230 History of Political Economy I7:2 (I985) tions themselves, the interesting case is when perceptions change but con- ditions do not. With some...

... argument concerning the schizophrenic condi- tion of Veblen’s methodology, Seckler briefly reviews the major in- stitutionalists who followed one or the other doctrine. Ayres and Copeland represent the extreme cases of explicit behaviorism. Mitchell and Commons are viewed as pursuing...

...: an incorrect one concerning Ricardo-p. 63-and one concerning Bakunin’s anarchism-p. 154.) Had Bose paid more attention to these historical condi- tions, his reading of Marx would have benefited, and so undoubtedly would have the book. Bose’s claim that his arguments are supported by Marx’s own words...

...-being. Pericles, in the Athenian funeral oration, claimed that a distinguishing feature of a free society is that people do not concern themselves overly much with their neighbors’ affairs. This blindness to others’ activities may be a necessary condi- tion for individual maximizing to result...

... per unit of output, assuming constant money velocity. Inflation is an equilibrium phenomenon caused by increases in money per unit of output. Price controls disturb both these equilibrium condi- tions, and upon removal have no lasting effect on inflation. Rockoff, in contrast, emphasizes...

... a rationale for the condi- tions of capitalism’s survival. Attempts to bypass ethics overlook that capitalism, as a system binding together free individuals, requires of them moral behavior patterns and judgments which can never be grounded in economics per se. Read- ers are reminded that economics...

... research interests include the history of air condi- tioning in the twentieth-century United States and the history of the Cobb-Douglas regression. Olav Bjerkholt is professor of economics at the University of Oslo, where he has taught since 1996. He was previously head of research...