第十章就业..docVIP

CHAPTER 10 THE MARGINAL PROPENSITY TO CONSUME AND THE MULTIPLIER 第十章 边际消费倾向和乘数 WE established in Chapter 8 that employment can only increase pari passu with investment. We can now carry this line of thought a stage further. For in given circumstances a definite ratio to be called the Multiplier, can be established between income and investment and, subject to certain simplifications, between the total employment and the employment directly employed on investment (which we shall call the primary employment). This further step is an integral part of our theory of employment, since it establishes a precise relationship, given the propensity to consume, between aggregate employment and income and the rate of investment. The conception of the multiplier was first introduced into economic theory by Mr. R. F. Kahn in his article on The Relation of Home Investment to Unemployment (Economic Journal, June 1931). His argument in this article depended on the fundamental notion that if the propensity to consume in various hypothetical circumstances is (together with certain other conditions) taken as given and we conceive the monetary or other public authority to take steps to stimulate or to retard investment, the change in the amount of employment will be a function of the net change in the amount of investment; and it aimed at laying down general principles by which to estimate the actual quantitative relationship between an increment of net investment and the increment of aggregate employment which will be associated with it. Before coming to the multiplier, however, it will be convenient to introduce the conception of the marginal propensity to consume. 在第八章，我们确立了一点，就业量只能随投资的增加而增加，现在我们可以沿着这个思路再前进一步。在既定的条件下，可以在收入和投资之间建立一个确定的比例，并将其称之为乘数。在某种简化条件下，又可以在总就业量和直接被用于投资的就业量（我们将其成为初期就业量）之间建立一个也可称之为乘数的确定的比例。这个进一步的步骤是我们整个就业理论中一个不可或缺的部分，因为它可以在给定的消费倾向下，在总就业量、总收入量和总投资量之间建立起一个精确的关系。乘数这个概念是由R?F?卡恩先生在他的论文《国内投资与失业的关系》（载《经济学杂志》，1931年6月号）中首次引入经济理论的。在该文中，他的论点来自这样一个基本思想，即：如果把各种假设情况下的（以