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Abstract

Economic phenomena are the outcomes of a plethora of factors, and economic analysis, unable to tackle them all, is compelled to select those factors which seem to be the most important, and to consider all other influences as data of the analysis. But these data are only provisional since they are wandering themselves. One characteristic of economic analysis is, then, that it is built on a moving foundation.

The laws of economics are to be compared to the law of the tides, rather than with the simple and exact law of gravitation.

Alfred Marshall

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© 1985 Springer-Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg

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Schlicht, E. (1985). The Setting of the Argument. In: Isolation and Aggregation in Economics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70298-3_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70298-3_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-70300-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-70298-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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