Taxonomic Note Research Articles

A TAXONOMIC NOTE ON THE GENUS <italic>ACTEONIA</italic> QUATREFAGES 1844

Journal Article A TAXONOMIC NOTE ON THE GENUS ACTEONIA QUATREFAGES 1844 Get access T. GASCOIGNE T. GASCOIGNE Alleyn's School, DulwichLondon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Molluscan Studies, Volume 40, Issue 5, August 1973, Pages 395–398, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.mollus.a065236 Published: 01 August 1973

ELASTICITY OF CAPITAL SUPPLY AND SECOND ORDER CONDITIONS: REPLY

WE CAN BE GRATEFUL to Professor Nichols for his taxonomic note, drawing attention to necessity, in optimization-equilibrium analysis, of considering relevant second order or sufficiency conditions. Such a procedure is, of course, a sine qua non of mathematical economic analysis, but it is as well to be reminded of it in any context in which, as in my earlier article, a new perspective on old problem of enterprise optimization is being opened up. Unfortunately, complaints against my article are not perfectly apposite and they stem, as I shall indicate in what follows, from a failure to consider adequately context I had endeavored to spell out carefully. It will be most useful at this time to emphasize three points which establish framework of analysis with which I am concerned, and then to answer directly main point of Professor Nichols' note. First, it is necessary, in our development of micro-financial theory, to recapture implications of what I called Robinson-Hicks tradition in theory of firm. Recognizing pervasive phenomena of imperfect competition and potentially monopsonistic positions, financial analysis of firm should now, as production and pricing theory of firm did previously, drop assumption of market perfection and an orientation that relies on thought-forms of perfect competition, on either side of as providing paradigm of analysis. For this reason I have endeavored to focus attention on the unique confrontation of an individual corporation with supply conditions determining its usage of external capital market, and I submitted a plea for a more careful consideration of this unique confrontation of firm with its imperfectly competitive environment, and particularly possibilities of its monopsonistic exploitation in money-capital market and therefore possibilities of its affecting elasticity of its interest cost function. Second, it should be kept clearly in mind that point of financial theory with which my earlier article was concerned, question of debt-to-equity ratio in capital structure of firm, is not, in last analysis, logically separable from many other questions bearing upon total conditions for corporate optimization. As I pointed out clearly in last two paragraphs of my article, a financial theory of firm is logically viable only when it is shown to be interdependent and consistent with theories of corporate production and real capital (as distinct from money-capital) structure. I indicated at that time also that I shall submit in a forthcoming book some new suggestions for a logically integrated body of micro-optimization theory, in which theories of production, capital, and finance are shown to be mutually relevant and their problem areas and outcomes mutually determinate. (See my The Theory of Firm: Production, Capital, and Finance, McGraw-Hill, New York, forthcoming). For present I simply remark that problem of optimum capital structure is much more complex, in context of a generalized corporate optimization model, than partial optimization argument in my article, taken by itself, might tend to suggest. It was for this reason that in article I deliberately did two things: first, I gave warning in concluding paragraphs about need to work toward higher theoretical level of integrating partial optimization theorem regarding elasticity of capital costs with other determinants of total corporate structure (production

A Taxonomic Note on the Multiplier and Income Velocity

There has recently been discussion of some aspects of the relationship between the multiplier and velocity (by which we shall always here mean income velocity).' The purpose of this note is to set out the relationship between the two as it stands in current economic theory. The method used here is to set up a comparative equilibrium Keynesian model and to derive from it equations for multipliers and velocities below and at full employment. This Keynesian model at full employment is then modified into a quantity theory model, and from some of the equations derived above we then derive a multiplier and velocities for this quantity theory model. The relationship between the multiplier and velocity is then briefly summed up in the light of these results.