Abstract
Clark’s own last estimate of his “chief published works” listed Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs, Social Control of Business, and his final book Competition as a Dynamic Process.1 The two earlier works might have served as the foundation for a subsequent treatise on economic dynamics.2 There is sufficient evidence in the J. M. Clark Papers to indicate that Clark was thinking of a general treatise on economics as early as the 1920s; in view of his prodigious output this can hardly be taken as wishful thinking.3 Furthermore, this desire persisted into his mature years as Clark indicated at several points. For example, in response to Professor Ray B. Westerfield’s suggestion that Clark join him in a joint petroleum industry study, Clark wrote in 1949:
The question is: what is the one most important thing I can do? I have long wanted to do a general treatise of a sort. I can’t tell just what it would look like — not much like the one I had outlined twenty-five years ago. At least it would bring together disconnected parts of my remarkably-scattered work. I had thought of it as my main job — still undone. To do it, I should have to refuse the tempting bribes that special projects offer. I suspect that is a case in which the dollar yardstick is an imperfect measure of the most useful direction in which to turn one’s efforts — and I hope that isn’t just a case of personal vanity. Another way of looking at it is: if I don’t do the oil industry job, it will still be well and competently done;… If I don’t do the general treatise, nobody else will do just the job I would do; the approaches I want to try out won’t get tried out in a systematic way.4
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Notes and References
Biographical note prepared by Clark in “‘Administered Prices’ in Their Relation to Competition and Monopoly,” 86.
The fact that the elder Clark had given thought to a dynamic treatise undoubtedly stimulated J.M. Clark: “On accepting a post with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1911, [J.B.] Clark wrote: The plan for a fairly large treatise on Economic Dynamics will have to give place to more modest ones, though I hope to make a few contributions to such a science, if life and health permit” (Clark to Anson D. Morse, 28 September 1911 [in Amherst College Archives]).” See Joseph Dorfman, “The Department of Economics,” in R. Gordon Hoxie, et al., A History of the Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 179.
See, for instance, the large folder entitled “Raw Material for ‘Social Economics’” Which contains material from the 1920s; in the J.M. Clark Papers. Clark’s own yearly reports on his current research at Chicago and Columbia demonstrate a consistent correlation between projection and achievement. He did not, however, project a general treatise in writing until the post-World War II period, and this was done in letters.
Clark to Ray B. Westerfield, 20 December 1949, copy in J.M. Clark Papers. Cf. Clark’s handwritten “Notes for general treatise. …” dated 19 May 1946 and “General Treatise: Questions of Strategy” dated 22 May 1946, in J.M. Clark Papers. Also, a note dated 5 December 1951 on “Articles that [I] could use [for] parts of a gen treatise” in J.M. Clark Papers.
Clark to Carter Goodrich, 13 December 1946, copy in J.M. Clark Papers. See also Clark to Frederick C. Mills, 30 March 1949, in ibid.
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Division of Economics and History, 1931. Reprint, with an introductory essay, “Some Documentary Notes on the Relations Among J.M. Clark, N.A.L.J. Johannsen and J.M. Keynes,” by Joseph Dorfman (New York: Kelley, 1970).
See J.M. Clark, Walton H. Hamilton, and Harold G. Moulton (eds.), Readings in the Economics of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918).
“The Basis of War-Time Collectivism,” The American Economic Review, 7 (December 1917): 772–774, 790. The same problem was taken up by Clark after World War II. See “Basic Problems and Policies,” in Donald H. Wallace, Economic Controls and Defense (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1953), 242–256.
Demobilization of Wartime Economic Controls (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1944), 48–49.
A cognate to the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s economic history of the United States begun in 1902. John Bates Clark was on the original advisory committee on economics and later became the Director of the Division of Economics and History. See also, Dorfman, Economic Mind, III: 349–351.
See the “Editor’s Preface” by James T. Shotwell in The Costs of the World War, v–x.
The Costs of the World War, xi.
Ibid., xi, 3.
Ibid, 1–5.
Ibid., 4, 5.
For these he drew heavily upon the work of the National Bureau of Economic Research, especially that of Willford I. King’s The National Income and Its Purchasing Power (New York: NBER, 1930).
King was a former student and colleague of John R. Commons and a member of the original staff of the National Bureau. Other sources utilized by Clark included Leo Wolman, Paul H. Douglas, E.E. Day, and Morris A. Copeland. Good data were scarce however: “in 1921 the Joint Statistical Association recommended, unanimously, that all future collection of capital statistics be discontinued by the United States Census.” See Paul H. Douglas, “Comments on the Cobb-Douglas Production Function,” in Murray Brown (ed.), The Theory and Empirical Analysis of Production (New York: NBER, 1967), 21.
Ibid., 17.
Ibid., 24–26; see also page 83.
Ibid., 81–85.
Ibid., 113–114.
Ibid.,81.
Ibid., 60–61.
Ibid., 122.
“Inductive Evidence on Marginal Productivity,” The American Economic Review, 18 (September 1928): 449–467; reprinted in Preface to Social Economics, 315. This article was a review of Charles H. Cobb and Paul H. Douglas’ “A Theory of Production,” The American Economic Review, Supplement, 18 (March 1928): 163–165. Although Clark severely questions the device of holding “technical progress” constant, he called the article “a bold and significant piece of pioneer work in a hitherto neglected field.” Preface to Social Economics, 325.
Costs of the World War, 93–94; 222; Appendix B.
Ibid., 290. Forty years later, commenting on the reprint of Clark’s volume by Augustus M. Kelley, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times noted the significance of Clark’s book for the present day. See Leonard S. Silk, “The Postwar Economy,” The New York Times, 14 April 1971.
New York: The National Bureau of Economic Research in Cooperation with The Committee on Recent Economic Changes, 1935; (reprinted: New York: Kelley, 1949). The Committee on Recent Economic Changes was formed under the chairmanship of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in 1927; it was an outgrowth of the Conference on Unemployment formed in 1921 to deal with some pressing postwar problems.
See Joseph Dorfman’s “Some Documentary Notes on the Relations Among J.M. Clark, N.A.L.J. Johannsen and J.M. Keynes,” introductory essay to the reprint edition of Clark’s The Costs of the World War to the American People (New York: Kelley, 1970 [1931]), 5–12. See also below.
The Costs of the World War, 166.
Alternative to Serfdom, (New York: Knopf, 1950), 95.
“Business Cycles: The Problem of Diagnosis,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, Supplement, 17 (March 1932): 215.
Ibid., 129–130. The emphasis is Clark’s.
Ibid., 131.
Ibid., 134.
Ibid., 134–136.
Ibid., 84–85.
Ibid., 52–53.
Ibid., 88, 163–164.
Ibid., 155–156.
Ibid., 191.
Ibid., 192.
See Clark’s “Wesley C. Mitchell’s Contributions to the Theory of Business Cycles,” in Stuart A. Rice (ed.), Methods in Social Science: A Case Book (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, (1931), 662–73. Appended to Clark’s essay are letters between Mitchell and Clark which reveal much about the formation of Mitchell’s thought. Reprinted in Preface to Social Economics, 390–416.
See Hearings on S. 6215, 72nd Congress, 1st session, “Establishment of National Economic council,” 737–752; Oral Testimony, 210–220. Printed in The New Republic, 69 (13 January, 1932), Part 2; reprinted in Preface to Social Economics, 229–269. Besides Clark, the committee members were J. Russell Smith, Edwin S. Smith and George Soule.
Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office; (reprinted, New York: Kelley, 1965). See also “Productive Capacity and Effective Demand,” in Economic Reconstruction: Report of the Columbia University Commission (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), 81, 105–25; and “Economics and the National Recovery Administration,” The American Economic Review, 24 (March 1934): 11–25.
Economics of Planning Public Works, 86. See R. F. Kahn, “The Relation of Home Investment to Unemployment”, Economic Journal, 46 (June 1931): 173–98;
and J.M. Keynes, The Means to Prosperity (London, 1933).
On the multiplier, see Hugo Hegeland, The Multiplier Theory (New York: Kelley, 1966 [1954]).
Economics of Planning Public Works, 83–87.
Ibid., 89–90.
Alternative to Serfdom, 104–105.
Clark’s term was “circuit velocity of money” which he defined as “the ratio between the total amount of circulating media in the country and the total net volume of production, or the total national income, which those media of exchange serve to finance.” He understood by “money,” “all forms of media of exchange.” See Economics of Planning Public Works, 96.
Ibid.
Ibid., 100.
Ibid., 100–101, 102.
In light of the foregoing, it is difficult to make factual sense of the following: Clark “failed, however, to show how they [his ‘many other interesting insights into the working of the economic system’] were related to each other — he made no use of the multiplier, for example — or which were of major and which of only incidental importance.” See Alan Sweezy, “The Keynesians and Government Policy, 1933–1939,” The American Economic Review, 62 (May 1972): 118–119. The statement that “Qualified support for Keynesian policies came from J.M. Clark and Arthur Gayer” suggests a lack of familiarity with Clark’s own work in this period, as well as his earlier writings. Finally the statement that “Clark and [Arthur] Gayer were still very much under the dominance of the traditional business cycle pattern of thinking” appears meaningless unless the work of Wesley Clair Mitchell and the National Bureau of Economic Research are construed as belonging to the “traditional” pattern.
Ibid.,112.
Review of Public Works Policy by the International Labor Office [Geneva], Political Science Quarterly 51 (June): 295.
Clark to J.M. Keynes, 24 July 1941; copy in J.M. Clark Papers. Quoted in Joseph Dorfman, “Some Documentary Notes on the Relations Among J.M. Clark, N.A.L.J. Johannsen and J.M. Keynes,” introductory essay to reprint of J.M. Clark, The Costs of the World War to the American People (1931; New York: Kelley, 1970), 14.
Also quoted in Activities 1940–1943: External War Finance, edited by Donald Moggridge, vol. 23 of The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes (London: The Macmillan Press, Ltd. for The Royal Economic Society, 1979), 191–193. Clark also met with Keynes at a dinner meeting of the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply officials on 10 June 1941. See ibid., 182. On this World War II trip, Keynes arrived in New York on 8 May 1941 and left for London on 28 July 1941.
Keynes to Clark, 26 July 1941; in J.M. Clark Papers. Quoted in Dorfman, “Some Documentary Notes,” 13; and vol. 23 of The Collected Writings of Keynes, 190–193. This evidence is inconsistent with the interpretation of Herbert Stein regarding Keynes’ view of his “followers” in Washington: “When Keynes visited Washington in June, 1941, on behalf of the British government, he was surprised at the extent to which the Washington economists had absorbed his thinking and the sophistication with which they applied it. At the same time he was critical of some of the procedures used, for reasons which suggested that he was still more classical than his Washington followers. (John M. Keynes to Walter S. Salant, 9 July 1941, 24 July 1941, 27 July 1941 [In Possession of W.S. Salant, Washington, D.C.]).” Herbert Stein, The Fiscal Revolution in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), 191, 489.
As will be seen, Clark was concerned not that Keynes was “more classical than his Washington followers” but that the Washington group were becoming epigones of Keynes: rigid and formalistic. In this regard, the opinion that “Despite their criticism, however, both Keynes and Clark recognized the [high] quality of economics being done in Washington” lacks a factual basis. See Byrd L. Jones, “The Role of Keynesians in Wartime Policy and Postwar Planning, 1940–1946,” The American Economic Review, 62, No. 2 (May 1972): 127–128.
The note is dated 10 December 1950; in the J.M. Clark Papers.
Review of Lloyd A. Metzler et al., Income, Employment and Public Policy in The American Economic Review, 39 (March 1949): 504–507. Samuelson’s essay was “The Simple Mathematics of Income Determination,” 133–155. Cf. “A Postscript by the Editor [Seymour E. Harris],” The Review of Economics and Statistics, 36 (August 1954): esp. 384–386.
“The Theoretical Issues,” The American Economic Review, 32, Supplement 1, Part 2 (March 1942): 8–9. See Dorfman, “Some Documentary Notes,” 14–15.
“Anti-Inflation Policy Approaches Maturity,” (Washington, D.C.: Office of Price Administration, 1943), 1, 3, 10, 9–22. This evidence is inconsistent with the interpretation that “John M. Clark supported Keynes’ view, which was also the classical prescription, that higher taxes were necessary to limit the inflationary threat. Skeptical of the high estimate of potential capacity, Clark urged concurrent use of fiscal and credit controls, rationing, priorities, and direct controls to limit price increases due to bottlenecks and excess demand for consumer goods.” Aside from the question of what Keynes’ actual views were, this interpretation attempts to portray Clark as a “Keynesian” economist. There is no evidence for this view. See Byrd L. Jones, “The Role of Keynesians in Wartime Policy and Postwar Planning, 1940–1946,” 128. As Clark noted in a letter in 1949: I am just slightly bothered at having Ken Galbraith classify me as an orthodox Keynesian. I don’t think Keynes was an orthodox Keynesian, and I did not think I was, except in the sense that pretty much everybody nowadays recognizes that total volume of spending does not take care of itself automatically. Clark to Frederick C. Mills, 30 March, 1949; Copy in J.M. Clark Papers.
Demobilization of Wartime Economic Controls (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1944), 166.
Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1961. This is not to suggest agreement with the assessment of one reviewer than the “volume is essentially a 500-page expansion of that 15-page article.” The review, by Richard E. Caves, is in The Political Science Quarterly, 77 (December 1962): 632–635. Although Clark wrote in his preface that “The present volume is an elaboration of a line of inquiry dating from … Toward a Concept of Workable Competition,’ …” the volume covered a much broader spectrum of theory than that contained in the 1940 article.
The American Economic Review, Part 1, 30 (June 1940): 241–256. An enlarged and revised version was reprinted in Edgar M. Hoover, Jr. and Joel Dean (eds.), Readings in the Social Control of Industry (Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1942), 452–475.
Competition as a Dynamic Process, ix.
See Dorfman, Economic Mind, V: 440; and Dorfman, “John Bates and John Maurice Clark on Monopoly and Competition”, “Introductory essay to the reprint edition of John Bates Clark and John Maurice Clark, The Control of Trusts, rewritten and enlarged edition (New York: Kelley, 1971 [1912]).
See also, Benjamin J. Klebaner, “Trusts and Competition: A Note on John Bates Clark and John Maurice Clark,” Social Research, 29 (Winter 1962): 475, 478–479. As the Clarks stated in the preface to the 1912 edition: “It is a joint production, in that one of its two authors has contributed the earlier work, the other has contributed most of the new material, and both have participated in the revisions demanded by rapid and recent changes in the business world.” The Control of Trusts, v.
Ibid., 3. This sentence is not in the original edition.
Ibid., 169. This part, from Chapter 7, “Constructive Competition,” does not appear in the original edition.
Compare Donald Dewey, The Theory of Imperfect Competition: A Radical Reconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 73–74.
See for instance, Economics of Overhead Costs, 444–447; Social Control of Business, 2d ed., 136.
“Toward a Concept of Workable Competition,” in Readings in the Social Control of Industry, 453–454.
Ibid., 460. “In fact, it may appear that much of the apparent seriousness of Professor Chamberlin’s results derives from what I believe to be the exaggerated steepness of the curves he uses to illustrate them.” Ibid.
Ibid., 462–463.
Ibid., 460–461.
Report of the Attorney General’s National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1955), 320.
Ibid., 337, 338.
Alternative to Serfdom, 70. In a note on the back flyleaf of his copy of George J. Stigler’s The Theory of Competitive Price (New York: Macmillan, 1942), Clark wrote: “Perfect competition grade B”: “i.e., prices fluctuate above & below average cost as demand is less or more than optimum capacity. Price tends to = [equal] marg[inal] cost at least when working below optimum capacity, and total capacity adjusts on av[erage] of fluct[uation], so av[erage] price = [equals] av[erage] (full) cost.” J. M. Clark Papers.
Clark to Calkins, 23 December 1961. Copy in J.M. Clark Papers.
Competition as a Dynamic Process, ix, 180.
Clark to Simon Kuznets, 11 April 1954. Copy in J.M. Clark Papers. The letter dealt with Clark’s subsequent paper, “Competition: Static Models and Dynamic Aspects,” The American Economic Review, 45, No. 2 (May 1955): 450–462.
Marshall, “Some Aspects of Competition,” 1890, quoted in Clark, 179.
Competition as a Dynamic Process, 212.
Ibid., 471.
Cf. Donald Dewey, The Theory of Imperfect Competition, Chapter 9.
Competition as a Dynamic Process, 471–472.
Ibid., 472, 474.
Ibid., 475.
Ibid., x.
Ibid., 359–360.
Clark to Leverett E. Lyon, 30 September 1948. Copy in J.M. Clark Papers. In the same letter, Clark wrote: “As you suggest, the basing-point tangle is a tall order. Arthur R. Burns and I know more about it than most economists, which isn’t saying much. I don’t think anybody, in the industry, in the Federal Trade Commission, in the Dep’t of Justice or among economists knows all about it, few know enough to earn the right to talk very confidently, and those that do have special interests to promote.”
Competition as a Dynamic Process, 301; 338–341; 361–362.
Clark to Robert D. Calkins, 19 October 1954. Copy in J.M. Clark Papers.
Competition as a Dynamic Process, x.
J.B. Heath of Manchester University, in the Economic Journal, 74 (March 1964): 184–186.
“Competition as a Dynamic Process,” in The American Economic Review, 52 (December 1962): 1970.
Review by Ralph F. Fuchs in the Indiana Law Journal, 38 (Summer 1963): 731.
The Journal of Political Economy, 71 (February 1963): 87–89.
“Varieties of Economic Law, and Their Limiting Factors,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 94, No. 2 (April 1950): 124–126. The reference to “bands or zones” was suggested by Frank W. Taussig’s “Is Market Price Determinate?”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 35 (May 1921): 394–411. Taussig spoke here of an area of “indeterminateness” and “a penumbra within which market prices fluctuate.” See Chapter 2.
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Shute, L. (1997). Problems of War, Depression, and Effective Competition. In: John Maurice Clark. Contemporary Economists. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25579-5_5
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