696 REPOET— 1889. 



As an instance of the excessive circumlocution to which the purely literary 

 method is liable, we may notice the doctrine of objective and subjective value, 

 which occupies many pages in one of the works to which we have referred. Is 

 there really much more in the distinction than what is visible on a glance at the 

 appropriate diagram ? The individual's subjective estimate of worth is expressed by 

 his particular demand- or supply-curve Oe,, Oe^, &c., Off^, Og„, &c., in fig. 10. The 

 proper combination of those individual curves gives the collective demand- and 

 supply-curves, of which the intersection represents the 'objective' value. 



Moreover, verbal circumlocutions are so little adapted to express mathematical 

 conceptions that we are sometimes left in uncertainty as to our author's meaning. 

 When Professor Bohm-Bawerk remarks that there is something special in the labour- 

 market, in that the buyer will vary his arrangements according to the price of the 

 article, the rate of interest (' Kapital,' p. 407), does he specify the property which 

 Messrs. Auspitz and Lieben have stated as general ; that the utility function (our ^, 

 note (s) above) is discontinuous, being different for large and small values of the 

 variable under consideration 1 



These deficiencies are more conspicuous in other writings of the Austrian school. 

 A glance at fig. 10, an intuition of the corresponding algebraic formulas, will show that 

 the notion of an average imported into the doctrine of value by Dr. Emil Sax (Staats- 

 wiHhschaft) is not quite appropriate. As an instance in which great abridgment 

 would be effected by mathematical expression, we might notice the last three 

 chapters of Dr. Zvickerkandl's ' Theorie der Preise.' Again the difficulty of con- 

 veying technical propositions without the proper phraseology may be illustrated 

 by Professor Wieser's ' Der natiirliche Werth,' when he speaks of value and 

 final utility having place in a Communistic or Socialistic State (p. 26 note and 

 passim). May his meaning thus be formulated ? In an economical regime dis- 

 tribution and exchange are regulated by the condition that the final utility of all 

 concerned should be zero, the total utility a minimum, subject to the law that there 

 sJwuld ie only one rate of exchange in a marJtet. In a communistic or utilitarian 

 regime the limitation which the last italicised clause expresses is removed. In 

 terms employed in our Note (e) the economical adjustment is determined by the 

 equations (a), (;8), and (7) ; the utilitarian adjustment is determined by (y8) and (7) 

 only — in short, the distinction between the points r and u in our fig. 9 referring to 

 note (e). 



In offering these trenchant criticisms I regret that my limits impose a curtness 

 which is hardly consistent with courtesy. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. The Incidence and -Effects of Import and Export Duties. 

 By C. F. Bastable. — See Reports, p. 440. 



2. Index-numbers as applied to the Statistics of Imports and Exports. 

 By Stephen Bourne, F.S.S. 



Two papers read at previous meetings of the British Association fully set 

 forth a scheme for using index-numbers in ascertaining the relation of volume to 

 value, and the comparison of these factors in the trade of the United Kingdom 

 with her colonies and the ports of other nations. Both of these papers will be 

 found published in extenso in the Report.^ A more voluminous paper on the 

 same subject will be published in the forthcoming number of the ' Roy. Stat. Soc. 

 Journ.'* 



It may be unnecessary, therefore, to say more on the present occasion than 

 that the index-number adopted was 1,000 (convertible into 100, 10, or 1 by the 

 use of the decimal points) to represent 240,000,000/., which happened to be the 

 value of the exports of British produce in the year 1883, when it was first em- 



» Aberdeen, 1885, pp. 869-873 ; Bath, 1888, pp. 536-540. 

 2 September, 1889, pp. 899-428. 



