Abstract
Say’s Law, the apparently simple proposition that supply creates its own demand, has had many different meanings, and many sets of reasoning underlying each meaning – not all of these by Jean-Baptiste Say. Historically, Say’s Law emerged in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, when the two striking new economic phenomena of vastly increased output and the economy’s cyclical inability to maintain sales and employment led some to fear that there was some inherent limit to the growth of production – some point beyond which there would be no means of purchasing it all. At the very least, some feared, there would not naturally or automatically be generated sufficient purchasing power to absorb the ever-growing output of the industrial economy, unless special policy arrangements were made to insure that income would be large enough to purchase output. Robert Owen and Karl Rodbertus exemplified these views, which were not those of any school of economists.
This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, 2008. Edited by Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume
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Sowell, T. (2008). Say’s Law. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_1284-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_1284-2
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