ABSTRACT
Modern economics is a study of the system of social-economic organization which functions through and in connection with the pricing process; price and pricing therefore constitute one of the central topics of economics. Modern systematic discussion of the phenomena of value and price may be said to have begun with the classical school. As a scientific question the problem of economic utility is simply that of the comparative motivation of purchasers of a commodity. The crucial fact in connection with the first problem is that, if motive or end in any form is granted any real role in conduct, it cannot be that of a cause in the sense of causality in natural science. Price "tends" to coincide with value, but the notion of value also involves a norm to which price would conform under some ideal conditions. The extremist wings in the advocacy of change recognize the inapplicability of purely intellectual knowledge.
