Keynesian analysis. The problem of coordination

The problems of economic stability and instability have, naturally, been of concern to economists for a very long time. But, as a special field of investigation, it emerged most strongly from the confluence of two developments of the depression decade of the 1930s. One was the development of national income statistics; the other was the reorientation of theoretical thinking often referred to as the “Keynesian revolution.”

If one singles out a particular household from the millions of economic units and studies it over a period of time, one can draw up a budget of that household’s transactions. The budget will come out as a long list of amounts sold and amounts bought. If at any time this economic unit had tried to do something different from what it actually did (cutting down, say, on meat purchases to buy another pair of shoes), the solution of the economic puzzle would have been correspondingly different. At the prevailing prices the supply of meat would have exceeded the demand, and the demand for shoes would have exceeded the supply.

The point Keynes made, right or wrong, was that, if the economy were to function as a coordinated system, the activities of each economic unit must be somehow controlled—and controlled quite precisely. This is done through price incentives. By raising the price of a good (relative to the prices of everything else), any economic unit can, generally speaking, be made to demand less of it or to supply more of it; by lowering the price, it can be made to demand more or to supply less. Through the conflux of prices, an individual unit is thus led to fit its activities into the overall puzzle of market demands and supplies. If economic units could not be controlled in this fashion, the market-organized system could not possibly function.

Keynesians therefore believe that in any given situation there exists, theoretically, one and only one list of prices that will make the puzzle come out exactly right. But the amounts that economic units choose to supply or demand of various goods at any given price list depend on numerous factors, all of which change over time: the size of the population and labour force; the stock of material resources, technology, and labour skills; “tastes” for particular consumer goods; and attitudes toward consumption as against saving, toward leisure as against work, and so on. Government policies—tax rates, expenditures, welfare policies, money supply, the debt—also belong among the determinants of demand and supply. A change in any of these determinants will mean that the list of prices that previously would have equilibrated all of the different markets must be changed accordingly. If prices are “rigid,” the system cannot adjust and coordination will break down.

Text 13. (Jurisprudence)

Methodological considerations in contemporary comparative law

The world contains a vast number of national legal systems. The United Nations brings together representatives of more than 190 states, but these states are far outnumbered by legal networks, since not all states—notably federal ones—have accomplished unification within their own frontiers. It is thus an enormous task to try to compare the laws of all the different jurisdictions. This problem, however, should not be overly magnified. Differences between the diverse systems are not always of the same order; some are sharp; others are so closely similar that a specialist in one branch of a legal “family” often may easily extend his studies to another branch of that family. For this reason, one can distinguish two types of research in comparative law. The exponent of “microcomparison” analyzes the laws belonging to the same legal family. By observing their differences, he will decide whether they are justified and whether an innovation made in one country would have value if introduced elsewhere. The researcher pledged to “macrocomparison,” on the other hand, investigates those systems differing most widely from each other in order to gain insight into institutions and thought processes that are foreign to him. For the “pure jurist,” concerned mainly with legal technicalities, microcomparison holds the greater attraction; whereas macrocomparison is the realm of the political scientist or legal philosopher, who sees law as a social science and is interested in its role in government and the organization of the community.

Microcomparison demands no particular preparation. The specialist in one national system is usually qualified to study those of various other countries of the same general family. His chief need is access to bibliographical material. In the United States, each state has its own statutes and, to some purposes, its own common law. Thus, the American lawyer must be a microcomparatist as he takes the 50 state systems and the federal law into daily account in his practice of the law. The same is true, to a large extent, of the Australian, or Indian, or Kenyan lawyer, who must take into account not only his own national system but also the laws of England and of other common-law jurisdictions in the Commonwealth.

The situation differs greatly in consideration of macrocomparison. Here no comparison is possible without previously identifying and thoroughly mastering the fundamentals of the law systems as they differ from place to place. The jurist must, as it were, forget his training and begin to reason according to new criteria. If he is French, English, or American, he must recognize that in some folk societies of East Asia, the upright citizen never crosses the threshold of a courtroom and acknowledges no subjective rights; instead, the citizen’s behaviour is governed by rites handed down from his ancestors, ensuring him the approval of the community. Likewise, if the Western jurist is to understand Islamic law or Hindu law, he must realize that the law is contained in rules of conduct laid down by a religion for its followers, and for its followers only. These rules, creating obligations and not rights, rank above all worldly matters and, in particular, are not to be confused with the regulations that a national government may, at a given time, enact and ratify.

Appendix 3.

Департамент образования города Москвы

Государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего образования города Москвы

МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОРОДСКОЙ ПЕДАГОГИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ

Материалы для сдачи экзамена

кандидатского минимума

по английскому языку

Материал подготовила:

Аспирантка

1-го года обучения

РНИИ культурного и

природного наследия

имени Д.С. Лихачева:

Воронина Ю.Н.

Москва 2015 г.