IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eej/eeconj/v23y1997i2p203-218.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On Gluts, Effective Demand, and the True Meaning of Say's Law

Author

Listed:
  • Petur O. Jonsson

    (Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University
    Princeton University)

Abstract

The meaning of Say's Law may seem an issue of little relevance to economists today. It would seem, on the face of it, of interest only to historians of economics. Whatever Say's Law might mean, the one thing we economists know, or at least think we know, is that it was comprehensively refuted by John Maynard Keynes in his "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money." Knowing the meaning of this ancient economic doctrine would appear a matter of no contemporary importance. Part of a Symposium entitled, "Say's Law Revisited", this paper argues that the disappearance of the guiding principles underlying Say's Law has grievously damaged our understanding of economic processes. The disappearance of Say's Law from amongst the conceptual tools employed by economists is in fact Keynes's most enduring legacy.

Suggested Citation

  • Petur O. Jonsson, 1997. "On Gluts, Effective Demand, and the True Meaning of Say's Law," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 23(2), pages 203-218, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:eej:eeconj:v:23:y:1997:i:2:p:203-218
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/eej/Archive/Volume23/V23N2P203_218.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Meacci, Ferdinando, 2013. "Say's Law," MPRA Paper 55495, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Mar 2014.
    2. Vahabi, Mehrdad, 2003. "La contrainte budgétaire lâche et la théorie économique [Soft Budget Constraint and Economic Theory]," MPRA Paper 17651, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. James C. W. Ahiakpor, 2004. "On the Future of Keynesian Economics," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(3), pages 583-608, July.
    4. Numa, Guy & Béraud, Alain, 2017. "Journal of the History of Economic Thought Preprints - Beyond Say’s Law: The Significance of J.-B. Say’s Monetary Views," OSF Preprints wstb4, Center for Open Science.
    5. Tarnell, Brown, 2011. "A brief look at Say's Law: Attempting to understand its relevance and meaning," MPRA Paper 39365, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Employment; Money;

    JEL classification:

    • B12 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Classical (includes Adam Smith)
    • B22 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Macroeconomics
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eej:eeconj:v:23:y:1997:i:2:p:203-218. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Victor Matheson, College of the Holy Cross (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eeaa1ea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.