The Anatomy of the Study

Abstract

The organisation and method of the Study are of interest inasmuch as they follow Robertson’s accustomed practice, of working from the particular to the general, from the individual to the aggregate or, in later parlance, from the micro to the macro level. Accordingly, the text is divided into two parts. Part I deals with fluctuations in individual trades and Part II with fluctuations in trade in general. In both Parts, Robertson follows the same procedure. And here we see why a reading of Robertson’s 1914 Royal Statistical Society (RSS) paper provides so useful an introduction to the Study, for it mirrors the method of the parent work. In the Study, as in the paper, he introduces a proposition, discusses it and then relates it to the actual historical experience of a range of trades.