ABSTRACT
This chapter deals mainly with the assumptions underlying Bhm-Bawerk's statement of the problem, and with the quite consistent conclusions which Professor Schumpeter drew from them. Professor Schumpeter did not, of course, intend these conclusions to constitute a reductio ad absurdum of the initial assumptions, but to-day they appear almost as such. Further sections attempt to estimate the progress which has been achieved by Professor lrving Fisher's application of the modern apparatus of utility analysis, and to show that even he did not quite succeed, at least in his terminology, in cutting himself loose from the inferences drawn from the assumptions of earlier utility analysis. With the utility of a commodity conceived as an absolute magnitude, it was natural to define constant tastes as implying that at all successive moments the marginal utility of equal quantities of a commodity available at successive moments was the same.
