"Fred Manville Taylor and the Origins of the Term "Say's Law
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4297574 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alain Beraud (0009-0008-8822-6819, CY Cergy Paris Université, CNRS, THEMA, F-95000 Cergy, France), Guy Numa (0009-0009-4768-9099, Economics Department, Colorado State University, Campus Delivery 1771, Fort Collins, CO 80523–1771, USA; by email: [email protected]., corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 329-350 |
| Publication date | 2022-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of Political Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2702 • E-ISSN: 1527-1919 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00182702-9699082 |
| OpenAlex | W4213028050 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
The term "Say's Law" was introduced in the twentieth century by an American economist, Fred Manville Taylor. To this date, no research has thoroughly investigated how the term came to be and what it really meant in Taylor's writings. This paper aims to examine how Taylor defined and used it. Drawing upon Taylor's publications and archival sources, we show that Taylor coined the term in direct reference to Jean-Baptiste Say's writings. Simply put, Say's Law was defined by Taylor as the principle that "total demand must in the long run coincide with the total product or output of goods produced for the market." Taylor never defined Say's Law as "the impossibility of demand deficiency as a cause of recession." Like Say, Taylor acknowledged that general demand deficiency could cause economic crises. In such scenarios, public expenditures could have expansionary effects, a position that Say also supported. Taylor rightly credited Say with the earliest and clearest formulation of the law of outlets (loi des débouchés), and in doing so he correctly interpreted the essence of Say's thinking
Economics · Impossibility · Keynesian economics · Mathematical economics · Monetary policy · Political science · Taylor rule · Taylor series · Term (time · Economic Theory and Institutions · Economic Theory and Policy · Law · Mathematics · Political Economy and Marxism
Collectivist economic planning
Retrospectives Lord Keynes and Mr. Say
The Right of the State to Be. An Attempt to Determine the Ultimate Human Prerogative on which Government Rests
Methods of Teaching Elementary Economics at the University of Michigan
Say's (at Least) Eight Laws, or What Say and James Mill May Really Have Meant
The Classical Monetary Theory
Fred M. Taylor's Views on Socialism
Do We Want an Elastic Currency
Jean-Baptiste Say on Free Trade
Money as a Store of Value
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |