We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
SPECULATION AND THE CARRYOVER.
- Authors
Williams, John Burr
- Abstract
The article reports that ever since Joseph, Jacob's eleventh son, as mentioned in the Bible, laid up corn in the land of Egypt for store against the seven years of famine to come, men have kept on hand a carryover, large or small, of food, fiber, and feed. Traders have tried to make a gain by a change in the supply or demand for these goods, but the way of their reckoning has never been reduced to rule by writers on economics from that day to this. Although the list of things that speculators in commodities must take into consideration has long been known, the way in which these factors are related has never been formulated into a Law of the Carryover. To find out how speculators do act, one must first find out how they should act. The study of rational self-interest has long been the method of economic theorizing, and this shall be followed here. All that follows will hold true of any storable good, like cotton, wool, rubber, tobacco, wheat, coffee, sugar, oil, copper, or tin; but the theory will be expounded in terms of only one of these, namely cotton, because it is easier to deal with a particular case.
- Subjects
SPECULATION; SUPPLY &; demand; COMMERCIAL products; DEMAND function; CONSUMPTION (Economics); COTTON
- Publication
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1936, Vol 50, Issue 3, p436
- ISSN
0033-5533
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/1882611