ABSTRACT
The terms statics and dynamics are of course borrowed from theoretical mechanics. Most of the writers who have used them were no doubt aware that the analogy of economic theory to mechanics is subject to limitations, like all analogies. The chapter shows that the mechanical analogy seems to deserve a searching examination and an effort to clarify some of the questions involved in its use. The root idea in economic statics is clearly the notion of equilibrium, and hence of forces in equilibrium. The most common example borrowed from nature to illustrate static equilibrium in economics is that of water tending toward its level. The chapter concerns equilibrium not as a state of rest but as a process in equilibrium, with a slower process forming the "given condition" within which a more rapid one takes place and tends toward a moving equilibrium.
