“Among persons interested in economic analysis, there are tool-makers and tool-users.” This book is presented to the analytical economist as a box of tools. It is an essay in the technique of economic analysis, and can make only an indirect contribution to our knowledge of the actual world. It is only by using their tools upon observed facts that economists can build up that working model of the actual world which it is their aim to construct. To tinker with the tool-box is merely a preliminary to the main attack, and, to those who are in haste for results, it may appear an idle occupation far inferior to the fruitful work of the tool-users. The gap between the tool-makers and the tool-users is a distressingly wide one, and no economist can fail to have sympathy with the impatience of the politician, the business man, and the statistical investigator, who complain of the extremely poor, arid, or even misleading information with which the analytical economists provide him. If a government is anxious to know whether in an actual case it should allow a railway the right to charge discriminating prices, it is poor comfort to be told that it will depend upon the relative concavities of the demand curves for transport of various types of goods whether the railway will carry a greater number of tons if it is allowed to discriminate than if it is not. If a rationalisation scheme is being put through, and the public are anxious to know whether the concentration of output upon a few firms is likely to raise prices, it will not help them much to be told that if the marginal cost curves are parallel to the demand curves for the products of the individual firms the price will remain unchanged. It is natural enough for the practical man to complain that he asks for bread and the economist gives him a stone. But the answer of the analytical economist to such complaints should not be to fling away his tools and plunge into the tangled problems of the real world, armed only with his naked hands. It should be rather to set about to elaborate his analysis so much that it can begin to be useful. A simple analysis can only be made upon simple assumptions, and the more complicated the analysis, the more complicated the assumptions upon which it will work, and the nearer the assumptions can be to the complicated conditions of the real world. The practical man must be asked to have patience, and meanwhile the economist must perfect his tools in the hope of being able sooner or later to meet the practical man’s requirements.

Introduction

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发表日期：

2025年

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Joan Robinson

摘要

“Among persons interested in economic analysis, there are tool-makers and tool-users.” This book is presented to the analytical economist as a box of tools. It is an essay in the technique of economic analysis, and can make only an indirect contribution to our knowledge of the actual world. It is only by using their tools upon observed facts that economists can build up that working model of the actual world which it is their aim to construct. To tinker with the tool-box is merely a preliminary to the main attack, and, to those who are in haste for results, it may appear an idle occupation far inferior to the fruitful work of the tool-users. The gap between the tool-makers and the tool-users is a distressingly wide one, and no economist can fail to have sympathy with the impatience of the politician, the business man, and the statistical investigator, who complain of the extremely poor, arid, or even misleading information with which the analytical economists provide him. If a government is anxious to know whether in an actual case it should allow a railway the right to charge discriminating prices, it is poor comfort to be told that it will depend upon the relative concavities of the demand curves for transport of various types of goods whether the railway will carry a greater number of tons if it is allowed to discriminate than if it is not. If a rationalisation scheme is being put through, and the public are anxious to know whether the concentration of output upon a few firms is likely to raise prices, it will not help them much to be told that if the marginal cost curves are parallel to the demand curves for the products of the individual firms the price will remain unchanged. It is natural enough for the practical man to complain that he asks for bread and the economist gives him a stone. But the answer of the analytical economist to such complaints should not be to fling away his tools and plunge into the tangled problems of the real world, armed only with his naked hands. It should be rather to set about to elaborate his analysis so much that it can begin to be useful. A simple analysis can only be made upon simple assumptions, and the more complicated the analysis, the more complicated the assumptions upon which it will work, and the nearer the assumptions can be to the complicated conditions of the real world. The practical man must be asked to have patience, and meanwhile the economist must perfect his tools in the hope of being able sooner or later to meet the practical man’s requirements.