AbstractsEconomics

From a review and exposition of current theories of distribution it is concluded that there is as yet no satisfactory account of that subject: that the activities of the entrepreneurial factor are unexplained, the parent problem of collective behaviour unsolved, and the fact of the indivisibility of economic magnitudes ignored. A program is proposed for a revised theory of distribution. In partial fulfillment of this program the following analysis is attempted: a detailed examination of the basis of individual utility functions; a formalization of the market and the mechanics of marketing, with some attention to the problem of indivisibility; and a study of the transition from individual to collective utility functions. In connection with the last a new proof is offered for K.J. Arrow's "General Possibility Theorem", and Arrow's work is otherwise extended and applied. A final chapter concerns Pareto's "Law of the Distribution of Incomes".