The Theory of Investment Once More: Mr. Boulding and the Austrians

Frank H. Knight

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1935, vol. 50, issue 1, 36-67

Abstract: Altho Mr. K. E. Boulding repudiates superficial features of the "Austrian" theory of capital as a matter of a production or investment period, there is danger that his clever mathematical treatment of the single investment in terms of time may lend support to such a position. Examination of the Austrian theory; its main fallacy lies in attributing production of capital goods to "primary" factors, in ignoring organic cooperation of all productive agencies, and in the fact that all are like capital goods in essential respects, 40.— Examination of Mr. Boulding's analogies of population and of lake and stream shows both faulty, 52.— Relations between two views of capital, as continuous or as cyclically produced, consumed and reproduced; necessity of preferring the continuity view, 63.— Basis of production period fallacies is in a confusion of things with values; value production is always instantaneous; it is impossible to treat the production of new capital as the production of its income yield thru future time, which would make the "period" infinite, 64.

Date: 1935
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1882342 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:50:y:1935:i:1:p:36-67.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press (joanna.bergh@oup.com).