Say's Law of Markets: What Did It Mean and Why Should We Care?
Abstract
When the Classical economists asserted the "impossibility of general overproduction," or what we now call Say's Law of Markets, they had in mind not periodic crises or business cycles but secular stagnation. Could the capitalist system absorb the constant increases in output without breakdown from limits inherent in the system? Say's Law supplied an affirmative answer to the question: with flexible prices, the system is forever tending to full employment, full-capacity equilibrium. The issue of what was meant by Say's Law has been hopelessly misunderstood in modern times, first by a Keynesian reading but more by a Walrasian reading of the doctrine.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Eastern Economic Association in its journal Eastern Economic Journal.
Volume (Year): 23 (1997)
Issue (Month): 2 (Spring)
Pages: 231-235
Contact details of provider:
Postal: c/o Dr. Alexandre Olbrecht, The Anisfield School of Business 205, Ramapo College, 505 Ramapo Valley Road, Ramapo, New Jersey 07430, USA
Phone: (201) 684-7346
Email:
Web page: http://www.ramapo.edu/eea/journal.html
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: Business Cycles; Cycle; Employment; Full Employment; Prices; Stagnation;Find related papers by 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 - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- 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. - William J. Baumol, 1999. "Retrospectives: Say's Law," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 195-204, Winter.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eej:eeconj:v:23:y:1997:i:2:p:231-235For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Victor Matheson, College of the Holy Cross).
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.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.