ABSTRACT
One of the chief obstacles in the way of quantitative analysis in economics has been the heavy burden of routine labor involved. A qualitative worker requires hardly any equipment beyond a few books and hardly any helper except a typist. A quantitative worker needs often a statistical laboratory, a corps of computers, and sometimes a staff of fieldworkers. Economists who practice quantitative analysis are likely to be chary of deserting the firm ground of measurable phenomena for excursions into the subjective. The obsolescence of the older type of reasoning in economics will be promoted by the change which is coming over our thinking about human nature. Psychologists are moving rapidly toward an objective conception and a quantitative treatment of their problems. If that does happen, the reflex influence upon economic theory will be more radical than any one can expect from the quantitative analysis of ordinary behavior records.
