ABSTRACT
This chapter examines whether the major economic events of the last twelve years, national and international, have reduced or enhanced the need for a reorientation of our conceptual and practical concerns in the direction of political economics. It discusses the difference between laws of positive economics and the generalizations that relate micro-motivations to public controls in methodological terms. The chapter also describes the role of primary controls—the conventional measures of modern economic policy, such as tariffs, taxation, social legislation, but also the fiscal and monetary controls advocated by the "new economics" of Keynesian provenance—as altering the micro-units' field of operation without, however, deliberately controlling their responses. Secondary controls are a tool designed to induce the micro-behavior as is in accord with the requirements of goal attainment. The limitations of the macro-goals practically to be pursued expressed "a conservative attitude toward social change".
