Essays on value and distribution

The essays collected in this volume belong to that general field of economic theory which is traditionally known as the "theory of value and distribution". They were written at scattered intervals extending well over twenty years, though the majority of them date from the 1930s and reflect the intellectual approach of economics in that period. The main characteristic of that approach, as was stated at the very beginning of the earliest of the papers reprinted here (written in 1933), is to seek insight into economic phenomena through "a more rigorous formulation of the conditions under which it is possible to make generalisations about the factors determining economic equilibrium", i.e., by exploring more thoroughly "the economics of that abstract world in which it is possible to give an exact account of the course of events solely by the aid of scientific generalisations", the latter being derived from "a few self-evident postulates alone".