Jean-Baptiste Say
Jean-Baptiste Say (French: [ʒɑ̃batist sɛ]; 5 January 1767 – 15 November 1832) was a liberal French economist and businessman who argued in favor of competition, free trade and lifting restraints on business. He is best known for Say's law—also known as the law of markets—which he popularized. Scholars disagree on the surprisingly subtle question of whether it was Say who first stated what is now called Say's law.[1][2] Moreover, he was one of the first economists to study entrepreneurship and conceptualized entrepreneurs as organizers and leaders of the economy.[3] He was also closely involved in the development of the École spéciale de commerce et d'industrie, historically the first business school to be established.
Jean-Baptiste Say
Say is well known for Say's law, or the law of markets, often controversially summarised as:
Say's law is instead uncontroversially summarized as:
The exact phrase "supply creates its own demand" was coined by John Maynard Keynes, who criticized it as in the former two, equating all four of these statements to mean the same thing. Some economists, including some advocates of Say's law who dispute this characterization as a misrepresentation,[7] have disputed his interpretation, claiming that Say's law can actually be summarized more accurately as "production precedes consumption" and that Say was claiming that in order to consume one must produce something of value so that one can trade this (either in the form of money or barter) in order to consume later.
Similar sentiments through different wordings appear in the work of John Stuart Mill (1848) and his father James Mill (1808). The Scottish classical economist James Mill restates Say's law in 1808, writing that "production of commodities creates, and is the one and universal cause which creates a market for the commodities produced".[8]
In Say's language, "products are paid for with products" (1803, p. 153) or "a glut can take place only when there are too many means of production applied to one kind of product and not enough to another" (1803, pp. 178–179). Explaining his point at length, he wrote the following:[9]
Say also wrote that it is not the abundance of money, but the abundance of other products in general that facilitates sales:[11]
Say's law may also have been culled from Ecclesiastes 5:11 – "When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?" (KJV). Say's law has been considered by John Kenneth Galbraith as "the most distinguished example of the stability of economic ideas, including when they are wrong".[12]
Say's law emerged during the early period of the Industrial Revolution, at a time when the economic phenomena of increased output merged with England's cyclical inability to maintain both sales and unemployment. This led many to believe that there was a limit to the growth of production, and there may come a point when there is no means of purchasing all output generated. Say's Law of Markets deals with the fact that production of commodities causes income to be paid to suppliers of the components of capital, labor, and land used in producing these goods and services. The sale price of these commodities is the sum of the payments of wages, rents, and profit.[13] Income generated during production of a commodity equals the value of that commodity. Therefore, an increase in the supply of output will result in an increase in the income necessary to generate demand for those products. In the words of Jean-Baptiste Say, "unless we produce, we cannot consume; unless we first supply, we cannot demand".[14]
Personal life[edit]
In 1793, Say married Mlle Deloche, daughter of a former lawyer.
Honours[edit]
In 1826, Say was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Attribution: