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By Root 1279 0

credit money had to be content was not satisfactory, and this shortcoming has not been entirely remedied yet. The problem has been regarded too much from the point of view of the technique of the monetary system and too little from that of the theory of exchange of goods. If the latter point of view had been adopted, it would have been impossible to avoid commencing the investigation with the proposition that the balance of trade between two areas with different currencies must always be in equilibrium, without the emergence of a balance needing to be corrected by the transport of money. [4] If we take a gold-standard and a silver-standard country as an example, then there still remains the possibility that the money of the one country will be put to a nonmonetary use in the other. Such a possibility must naturally be ruled out of account. The relations between two countries with fiat money would be the best example to take; if we merely make our example more general by supposing that metallic money may be in use, then only the monetary use of the metallic money must be considered. It is then immediately clear that goods and services can only be paid for with other goods and services; that in the last analysis there can be no question of payment in money.

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[1] The theory put forward above, which comes from Ricardo, is advocated with particular forcefulness nowadays by Cassel, who uses the name purchasing-power parity for the static exchange ratio. See Cassel, Money and Foreign Exchange After 1914 (London, 1922), p. 181 f.

[2] See Senior, Three Lectures on the Transmission of the Precious Metals from Country to Country and the Mercantile Theory of Wealth (London, 1828), pp. 5 ff.

[3] See Ricardo, "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation," in Works, ed. McCulloch, 2d ed. (London, 1852), pp. 213 ff.; Hertzka, Das Wesen des Geldes (Leipzig, 1887), pp. 42 ff.; Kinley, Money (New York, 1909), pp. 78 ff.; Wieser, "Der Geldwert und seine Veränderungen," Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik 132: 530 ff.

[4] Transitory displacements are possible, if foreign money is acquired in the speculative anticipation of its appreciating.

Chapter 11. The Problem of Measuring the Objective Exchange-Value of Money and Variations in it

1. The History of the Problem. 2. The Nature of the Problem. 3. Methods of Calculating Index Numbers. 4. Wieser's Refinement of the Methods of Calculating Index Numbers. 5. The Practical Utility of Index Numbers.

1 The History of the Problem

The problem of measuring the objective exchange value of money and its variations has attracted much more attention than its significance warrants. If all the columns of figures and tables and curves that have been prepared in this connection could perform what has been promised of them, then we should certainly have to agree that the tremendous expenditure of labor upon their construction would not have been in vain. In fact, nothing less has been hoped from them than the solution of the difficult questions connected with the problem of the objective exchange value of money. But it is very well known, and has been almost ever since the methods were discovered, that such aids cannot avail here.

The fact that, in spite of all this, the improvement of methods of calculating index numbers is still worked at most zealously, and that they have even been able to achieve a certain popularity that is otherwise denied to economic investigation, may well appear puzzling. It becomes explicable if we take into account certain peculiarities of the human mind. Like the king in Rückert's Weisheit des Brahmanen, the layman always tends to seek for formulae that sum up the results of scientific investigation in a few words. But the briefest and most pregnant expression for such summaries is in figures. Simple numerical statement is sought for even where the nature of the case excludes it. The most important results of research in the social sciences leave the multitude apathetic, but any set of figures awakens its interest. Its history becomes a series of