![]() There are thus, in fact, as many “static states” as there are economic problems worth studying. It is more realistic and intelligible to isolate a short-period effect, abstract entirely from perturbations due to the operation of more slowly working forces because for short periods the effects of the latter are in reality relatively less important. This would have to be done just the same if the causes did not generally operate in different periods of time, but the latter fact greatly simplifies our thinking. We must ascertain the separate effects of the different causes and combine them after we understand them. But scientific treatment, in view of the mere limitations of the human mind and the necessity of considering one thing at a time, is forced to treat the separation as absolute. The effects of long-period changes are not generally in fact practically negligible over the shorter periods. It may not, however, be true, and generally is not, that the different changes can be completely separated in this way. The data or given conditions are different when different periods of time are under consideration. The essential fact in economics is that different changes take place at different rates, that for certain time periods certain aspects of the situation may be assumed to remain unchanged, while for longer periods some of these will undergo change. The possibility of saying anything about a thing rests on the assumption that it preserves its identity, or continues to be the same thing in the respect described, that it will behave in future situations as it has in past. There is no sense in making statements that will not continue to be true after they are made. All science is static in the sense that it describes the unchanging aspects of things. Passing over the technical point that there is no discoverable analogy between the meaning of static and dynamic in economics and their established meaning in mechanics, our objections are more serious. The writer doubts whether its popularization has represented an advance in clearness of ideas or a service to the science. The most familiar device for separating certain short-time and long-time aspects of economic problems is the fiction of the “static state,” and our first critical duty is to raise serious question as to this conception in its current form. The average student of economics is likely to be quite baffled by these distinctions and to get no clear ideas at all but he is still more baffled by differences in degree, where distinctions are not sharply drawn and statements are left in the form of “it depends.” This paper looks to the problem of exposition from the standpoint of the student rather than to the correction of errors in accepted doctrine, but the course of the argument will have to note cases in which current phraseology is misleading to unwary readers if it does not represent fundamental misconceptions on the part of economists themselves. ![]() The forces which immediately regulate prices are different from those which ultimately control, and there are degrees or stages in both immediateness and ultimateness. Great difficulties are met with in stating a clear and straightforward exposition of price theory because of the fact that the given conditions or data of the problem are so different according to the length of the time period which the explanation takes into account. JPE, 1921 Cost of Production and Price Over Long and Short Periods The average student of economics is likely to be quite baffled by these distinctions and to get no clear ideas at all but he is still more baffled by differences in degree, where distinctions are not sharply drawn and statements are left in the form of “it depends.” This paper looks to the problem of exposition from the standpoint of the student rather than to the correction of errors in accepted doctrine, but the course of the argument will have to note cases in which current phraseology is misleading to unwary readers if it does not represent fundamental misconceptions on the part of economists themselves…. ![]()
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