Notes on Comparative Economics.

This article investigates consumers' attitudes with a view to discovering their implications for the general interchangeability of goods, the process of increasing the utility of goods and the classification of economies dependent primarily on exchange without the use of coin or paper money. Leaving aside the economy based on the extensive use of money and related to complex class structures two widely representative types of economy may be distinguished. The first is characterized by the existence of three groups or categories of goods namely raw materials, implements and personal treasure. In the second type of economy, raw materials are not kept separate from the implements, and there is no class of goods which has value solely as personal treasure. Whatever arrangements are made for the distribution of the raw materials once they are gained, two conditions are preserved. First is that no object belonging to the first group is exchanged for objects belonging to either of the other groups. Second, any object into which raw material has been transformed is disengaged from the primary economic cycle.