TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 



695 



hand a number of would-be buyers (Konra(Vs'Jahrbuch,'1886; 'Kapital . . .,'p.211. Cp. 

 Mr. James Bonar's excellent article in the ' Quarterly Journal of Economics,' Oct. 1888). 

 The latter are arranged in the order of their strength : first, the one who is prepared 

 to give most for a horse, the highest price which the second can afford is less, and so 

 on. Parallel to this arrangement is that of the would-be sellers : first, he who can 

 sell cheapest ; and so on. Upon this hypothesis it might happen that the fifth would- 

 be buyer is willing to give a little more than the lowest figure which the fifth 

 would-be seller will take ; while the sixth on the side of the buyers is not willing to 

 g^ve quite as much as the sixth horse-dealer stands out for. In this case five horses 

 only will be sold ; and the couple who are the last between whom a bargain is possible 

 — buyer No. 5 and seller No. 5 — enjoy a mighty distinction as the Orenzpaa/r ; an 



Fig. 10. 



honour which is to some extent shared with No. 6, the first couple between whom a 

 bargain is impossible. JJ^' JJ 



Now this attention to a particular couple is not always appropriate. How if the 

 weakest actual buyer should prove to be, not buyer No. 5 but buyer No. 1, as to a second 

 horse ? Professor Bohm-Bawerk, indeed, has thought of this case, and called atten- 

 tion to it in a note to his later redaction ('Kapital . . .,'p. 218). So far — although the 

 whole simplicity of the scheme is destroyed when we permit second and third horses to 

 the different buyers and sellers —the conception of a ' limiting couple ' may still be re- 

 tained. It will be found, however, that this idea is not appropriate to the general case 

 of a divisible commodity, which a single individual on one side of the market may buy 

 from or sell to a large number on the other side. That general case is much more 

 clearly represented by a diagram like fig. 10, where the inner thin-lined curves 

 represent the dispositions of the individual dealer, the outer thick curves the collective 

 supply and demand (cp. Au.spitz and Lieben, 'Theorie der Preise'). No doubt Pro- 

 fessor Bohm- Bawerk's conception is appropriate to a particular case, that in which 

 the Kleinstc Marktiibliche Men^eneinheit, in the phrase of Messrs. Auspitz and Lieben 

 (^iHd. p. 123), is considerable. But it is better with those eminent theorists to begin 

 with the general or, at least, the simple case. 



