Читать книгу Market Theory and the Price System - Israel M. Kirzner - Страница 9

During the past few years a number of competently written textbooks on price theory have appeared. The author’s excuse for adding yet another book to the elementary literature in this field is that his approach, while in no sense original, presents the subject in an entirely different light.

The approach adopted in this book views the market as a process of adjustment. In this process individual market participants are being forced continually to adjust their activities according to the patterns imposed by the activities of others. Market theory then consists essentially in the analysis of these step-by-step adjustments and of the way the information required for these adjustments is communicated. Equilibrium positions are not, as in other books, treated as important in themselves. They are rather seen as merely limiting cases where the market process has nothing further to do, all activities being already mutually adjusted to the fullest extent.

Despite the importance attached to the implications of the approach adopted here, users of this book will find relatively few major substantive departures from price theory as it is usually presented. The principal areas where major differences will be found arise out of the drastically reduced attention paid to perfect competition. Presuming the basic course in general economics, this book is designed for an undergraduate course in intermediate price theory.

For the rest, an author can hardly hope to have escaped revealing his own proclivities, biases, and predilections. Determined efforts have been made to subordinate geometry to economic reasoning. Whatever the author may have learned from Marshall, Edgeworth, and J. B. Clark, this book probably will reveal that he has learned more from Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, and Wicksteed.

Besides his indebtedness to the literature, the author must acknowledge much kind help received from several persons during the preparation of this book. To his teacher Ludwig von Mises, above all, he owes his appreciation of the market process. In addition to reading the finished manuscript, Professor Mises offered many helpful suggestions during its completion. It is with deep pleasure that the author dedicated this volume to him upon the attainment of his eightieth year.

The author is grateful to his colleagues at New York University, as well as to his students, for stimulating discussions on a number of points. To Professor L. M. Lachmann of the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, he is indebted for several valuable insights that were made use of in exposition. The author’s wife has patiently and cheerfully endured, aided, and encouraged throughout the book’s preparation. To all these he is grateful; none of them is to be held responsible for all that remains unsatisfactory.

Israel M. Kirzner