This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
“The Concept of Value,” Journal of Value Inquiry, I, No. 1 (Spring 1967), 1–11. All further references to this article will appear as bracketed page citations in the text.
This model has an economic interpretation. K. Boulding calls it the “Bathtub Theorem” in his Economics of Peace (New York, 1945), p. 127.
Baier seems to introduce a curious circularity in his discussion of the “four different classes of demands on a life” [p. 3]. The “critic” establishes what constitutes legitimacy [p. 4], but one is no where told who is to “criticize the critic.” The question of the legitimacy of the demand is thus transferred from the individual to the maxim-giver. This looms important, as the distinction between the “morally adequate life” and the “valuable life” is ultimately due to this criticism. I must thank Dr. B. Magnus for directing my attention to this point.
The extent to which consumer demand does set these parameters can be represented in macroeconomic theory as a strictly lawlike statement. (We say parameters here, as all measurements will be represented by distributions over continuous variables, hence can be expressed in terms of means and standard deviations). This lawlike statement we will call the “arc specification elasticity of demand”: \(\eta = - \left( {\frac{{Q^* - Q}}{{\rho ^ * - \rho }}} \right)\left( {\frac{{\rho ^ * + \rho }}{{Q^* + Q}}} \right)\) where Q* is the quantity of the good demanded where the parameters are ϱ*, and Q, the quantity where the parameters have shifted to ϱ. If Q* is optimal output, then the parameter shift causes a decline in total profits. That the theoretical exposition here serves to demonstrate that product differentiation and advertising conversely influence demand should be readily obvious: Cf. E. H. Chamberlin, Theory of Monopolistic Competition (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), pp. 213 ff.
Aristotle's doctrine of excess and the mean would seem much closer to the concept of quality control from this perspective.
W. Baumöl, Economic Theory and Operations Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, 1965), p. 295.
In a wider context, say that of sociological “theory,” the absence of precision and parametric distributions can be, in large part, attributed to the very lack of theory, rigorously defined. The same can be said for the presence of properly normative concepts (e.g., “function”).
Cf. V. Pareto, Manuel d'économic politique (Paris, 1909), Ch. VI.
Cf. J. Due and R. Clower, Intermediate Economic Analysis (Homewood, 1961), p. 524. In order to distinguish between preferences and “interests” [p. 3], one can provide for the latter in the social welfare function, largely as external economies.
Cf. L. Walras, éléments d'économie politique pure (Paris-Lausanne, 1926), Leçons 5-15, as a beautiful example.
In Systeme und Methoden in den Wirtschafts- und Sozial Wissenschaften (Tübingen, 1964), pp. 574–6.
E.g., E. J. Mishan, Welfare Economies (New York, 1964), pp. 96–97.
Cf. H. B. Curry, A Theory of Formal Deducibility (Notre Dame, 1957), I, 1–3.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Welty, G. Quality control, welfare economics, and professor baier. J Value Inquiry 1, 139–148 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00240091
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00240091