tailieunhanh - History of Economic Analysis part 30

History of Economic Analysis part 30. At the time of his death in 1950, Joseph Schumpeter-one of the major figures in economics during the first half of the 20th century-was working on his monumental History of Economic Analysis. A complete history of humankind's theoretical efforts to understand economic phenomena from ancient Greece to the present, this book is an important contribution to the history of ideas as well as to economics. | History of economic analysis 252 An example will illustrate this situation. One of the most interesting English economists of the late eighteenth century Anderson 9 boldly asserted that man s power to increase the productiveness of his fields was such as to make it keep pace with his population whatever that might be. 10 This has been interpreted to spell denial of the law of decreasing returns Malthus being the first of Anderson s critics to misunderstand him in this sense. But Anderson s emphasis was not upon the product but upon the productiveness of land. And this together with his reference to discoveries which occurs in the same passage should be sufficient proof that all he was thinking of was what we have just decided to dub Historical Increasing Returns. In Anderson s case it is particularly easy to satisfy ourselves that his no doubt exaggerated ideas concerning these possibilities were compatible with the recognition of the law of decreasing returns. Though it is true that he nowhere mentioned Turgot s case it is equally true that he accepted Sir James Steuart s case. For he actually invented the Ricardian theory of rent which presupposes it. d Rent of Land. We have seen that the explanation of the rent of land was not one of the problems that attracted attention in the early stages of economic analysis. Cantillon and after him the physiocrats may be said to have been the first11 to entertain a distinctive view of the phenomenon it simply amounted to the proposition if we may couch it in terms of a later time that land yields rent because it is a scarce factor of production or even the only original one and that this rent is partly an interest payment on investments made by the landlord and partly a payment for the natural and indestructible productive powers of the soil. This theory was primitive and not fully articulate but nevertheless superior to many later speculations. In addition to the merit of saying or implying nothing that is definitely wrong