ミルはソーントンに如何に答えるべきであったか (平成一四年一月一五日 提出)

抄録

In Negishi (1986), I developed my view on the so-called Mill's recantation of the wages fund doctrine, the short-run theory of wages in the classical school of the economics. According to a survey article on the recent John Stuart Mill interpretations, “a further twist to the debate has been given by Negishi (1986). He reminds us that Mill, in the 1871 edition of the Principles, retracted some of his earlier enthusiasm for Thornton. There he in effect rejected the idea that disequilibrium trades in any way undermine the importance of the principle of the equality of supply and demand, and cautioned that it was too early to adduce any firm conclusions from the discussion engendered by Thornton's book”(De Marchi, 1988).
I have three purposes in this present article. The first one is to offer a Japanese version of Negishi (1986), which I think it worthwhile, since there are still no Japanese translation available of the related literature referred and quoted there, i. e., Thornton (1869), Mill (1869) and Thornton (1870). Secondly, I wish to record the appearance of some related literature published in 1990's, like Ekelund (1997), Forget (1991), Fukagai (1995), Mawatari (1997), Mirowsky (1990), Negishi (1998), Vint (1994), and White (1994). Particularly, I wish to make some detailed rejoinders to comments given by Mawatari (1997).
The final one is to consider, from the point of view of the modern economic theory (Arrow and Hahn (1971), pp. 324-346, and Negishi (1972), pp. 207-227), how Mill should have replied to Thornton, who asked the significance of a small amount of trade at equilibrium prices, which are arrived after a great bulk of goods were already sold at disequilibrium prices (Thornton, 1869, pp. 53-54; 1870, p. 65). As is easily seen at a glance at Figures 6, 7 and 8 in the text of the present article, i. e., those of box diagram and of utility frontier, the importance of the final small amount of trade at equilibrium prices is that the Pareto optimality is assured.