Download CITAS DE IRVING FISHER: ECONOMÍA, EL PROBLEMA DE LA

CITAS DE IRVING FISHER:
ECONOMÍA, EL PROBLEMA DE LA MEDIDA Y UTILITARISMO
ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS – MACMILLAN COMPANY, 1916
Economics may be most simply defined as the Science Of Wealth (…) The purpose of
economics is to treat the nature of wealth; the human wants served by wealth; the
satisfaction of those wants and the efforts required to satisfy them; the forms of the
ownership of wealth; the modes of its accumulation and dissipation; the reasons that some
people have so much of it and others so little; and the principles that regulate its exchange
and the prices which result from exchange (…) It is worth emphasizing at the outset, that
the chief purpose of economics is to set forth the relations of wealth to human life and
welfare. (p.1)
(…) the ordinary meaning of wealth includes only material objects owned by human beings
and external to the owner. (p. 3)
(Some economists add to the definition that an object, to be wealth, must be useful. But
utility is really implied in ownership. Unless a thing is thought to be useful, no one would
care to own it. Nothing is owned which is not useful in the sense that its owner hopes to
receive benefits from it, and it is only in this sense that utility is to be employed as a
technical term in economics. p. 3. pdp 1)
We have now found that back of the demand curve or schedule in any market lie the
individual demand curves or schedules of all the people who compose the market. The next
step is to find what causes lie back of the individual demand curves or schedules (…) Desire
for goods implies desirability in those goods. The term “desirability” is synonymous with
what is usually called “utility” in textbooks (…) if there exists a keen desire to purchase a
certain piece of land, we say that the land is especially desirable or has great desirability
(…) The desirability of any particular good, at any particular time, to any particular
individual, under any particular conditions, is the strength or intensity of his desire for that
good at that time under those conditions. (p.281-282).
If Individual No.I thinks that one ton of coal is a dozen times as desirable to him as a dollar,
he will evidently be willing to pay any price up to $12 for that ton(…) As there are no
standard units of desirability, it will not matter what unit we select. In the table, for
simplicity of division, we have taken as our unit for measuring desirability the marginal
desirability of money to Individual No.I himself. (p. 289)
Human desires are very real economic influences, and the variations in their intensity are
definitely registered by variations in the demand for goods. Although, therefore,
“desirabilities” of goods and money are somewhat elusive to grasp, they are by no means
unreal, unimportant, or imaginary. Like the heights of the clouds they are difficult to
measure, yet definite magnitudes. They are, however, magnitudes pertaining to separate
individuals personally, not to society in the mass. It is not surprising, therefore, that as yet
we have no means of measuring desirabilities by actual statistics except in terms of money,
and such measurement is misleading because it takes no account of differences in the
desirability of money to different people or to the same person at different times.
Moreover, to measure desirability in terms of money is merely to measure a cause by its
effect (…) Although desirability is extremely difficult of measurement, even for the
individual concerned, it is sufficiently measurable to make its study of great and
fundamental importance in economics (…) While the individual desire is fitful, the resultant
of the desires of all the purchasers is relatively steady, - just as, in physics, the force of the
individual molecule of the atmosphere which bombard our bodies are variable and fitful,
but the aggregate resultant atmospheric pressure is a steady fifteen pounds per square
inch. (p. 301)
MATHEMATICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN THE THEORY OF VALUE AND PRICES (1892) –
THE WORKS OF IRVING FISHER V.1; EDITED BY WILLIAM BARDER (1997),
PICKERING & CHATTO – SOURCE: TRANSACTIONS OF THE CONNECTICUT ACADEMY,
VOL. IX, JULY, 1892)
To fix the idea of utility the economist should go no further than is serviceable in explaining
economic facts. It is not his province to build a theory of psychology. It is not necessary for
him to take sides with those who wrangle to prove or disprove that pleasure and pain alone
determine conduct. These disputants have so mangled the ideas of pleasure and pain that
he who follows them and their circular arguments finds himself using the words in forced
senses (…). The plane of contact between psychology and economics is desire.(…) No one
ever denied that economic acts have the invariable antecedent, desire. Whether the
necessary antecedent of desire is “pleasure” or whether independently of pleasure it may
sometimes be “duty” or “fear” concerns a phenomenon in the second remove from
economic act of choice and is completely within the realm of psychology. We content
ourselves therefore with the following simple psycho-economic postulate: Each individual
acts as he desires. (p. 55)
REVIEW OF MATHEMATICAL INVESTIGATIONS BY F.Y.EDGEWORTH – IRVING FISHER:
CRITICAL RESPONSES; EDITED BY ROBERT DIMAND, VOL 1 (2007), ROUTLEDGE SOURCE: ECONOMIC JOURNAL 3 (MARCH 1893): 108-12.
There is another ‘attribute of utility as a quantity’ which we may dispense with when we
‘seek only the causation of the objective facts of price and commodity distribution’> namely,
that one man’s utility can be compared to another’s. Dr.Fisher, who has a just conception of
the great gulf which separates economics from moral philosophy, regards comparisons
between the pleasures of different individuals as ‘mysterious’ (p.99) which ‘do not belong
here’ (p. 87). At the same time he throws out some hints which will be valuable for the
utilitarian.
‘The statistician might begin those utilities in which men are most alike – food
utilities - and those disutilities in which they are most alike as the disutilities of
definite sorts of manual labour. By these standards he could measure and correct
the money-standard, and if the utility curves for various classes of articles were
constructed, he could make rough statistics of total utility, total disutility, gain, and
utility-value which would have considerable meaning. Men are much alike in their
digestion and fatigue. If a food or a labour standard is established, it can be easily
applied to the utilities in regard to which men are unlike, as of clothes, houses,
furniture, books, works of art, etc.’ (p.87)
IS "UTILITY" THE MOST SUITABLE TERM FOR THE CONCEPT IT IS USED TO DENOTE?
- AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, VOLUME 8 (1918), PP. 335-7 (DISPONIBLE EN
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/fisher/utility.htm)
But, as yet, no generally accepted substitute for "utility" has been found. The term is a
heritage of Bentham and his utilitarian philosophy. It is misleading to every beginner in
economics and to the great untutored and naïve public who find it hard to call an overcoat
no more truly useful than a necklace, or a grindstone than a roulette wheel. Economists
cannot with impunity override the popular distinction between useful and ornamental,
much less that between useful and useless, without confusing and repelling the man in the
street.
(…)The two terms "want" and "wantability" might well be used alternatively, affording
welcome variety in expression.(…) Another advantage is that these terms afford the means
for coining an expression, to me at least much needed, for a unit of "wantability". Such a
unit might be called a "wantab" (…) If, as I anticipate, the science of measuring human
wants is to be developed in the future a convenient term for this unit will be needed.
THE RATIONALITY OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY: I BY WESLEY MITCHELL; JOURNAL OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY, VOL.18, No. 2, FEB 1910, p. 97-113.
It was in this spirit that Jevons based his Theory of Political Economy upon "a calculus of
pleasure and pain," and described his results as "the mechanics of utility and self-interest."
But this type of economic theory is not limited to avowed hedonists. Irving Fisher, though
expressly repudiating Bentham's theory of pleasures and pains, has worked out an
elaborate treatment of values and prices "in terms of mechanical interaction” (p. 109)
Professor Fisher's rejection of hedonism seems to be merely verbal. He avoids the
terminology of Bentham, but works with Bentham's ideas under new labels. (pdp 24)
DAVENPORT’S VALUE AND DISTRIBUTION – THE JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY,
VOL. 16, No. 10, DEC 1908, P.661-679
There is no such thing as "effective social utility," but simply individual desires existing in
separate individual minds. Consequently when we speak of the relation of utility to demand
and supply, we must have reference to the minds which actually decide production and
consumption. (p.665)
CAPITAL AND INTEREST - POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, VOL. 24, No. 3, SEP 1909,
P.504-516
Professor Veblen overlooks another distinction which I tried to draw in reference to the
psychologic side of economic science. Here also I agree with him on the general thesis that
the " calculus of pleasure and pain " has been terribly misused by theoretical economists.
Economists have burdened themselves with a crude psychology. It is unnecessary for
economists to enter within the field of psychology, but it is necessary to acknowledge
contact with that field. The point of con- tact is human desire. It is quite impossible for any
economic theory to be completely worked out without some place in the analysis for
human desires. Many economists have confused pleasure and pain with desire and
aversion. If Professor Veblen has not made this confusion, he has at any rate been greatly
mistaken in the views he has ascribed to me. He says: "The day when Bentham's conception
of economic life was serviceable for the purposes of contemporary science lies about one
hundred years back, and Mr. Fisher's reduction of ' income' to 'psychic income ' is late by
that much." He could scarcely have written thus had he comprehended my own views. As
early as 1892 I wrote: "'Utility' is the heritage of Bentham and his theory of pleasures and
pains. For us his word is the more acceptable, the less it is entangled with his theory." 1
And again: This foisting of Psychology on Economics seems to me inappropriate and
vicious . . . Gossen and Jevons appeared to regard the "calculus of Pleasure and Pain" as part
of the profundity of their theory. They doubtless saw no escape from its use. The result has
been that " I mathematics " has been blamed for "I restoring the metaphysical entities
previously discarded" (p. 512-3).