tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post632245387847952218..comments2023-09-25T04:26:51.568-06:00Comments on The Barefoot Bum: Real Microeconomics (supply shocks)Larry Hamelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-26570993007242294422012-01-14T16:23:08.442-07:002012-01-14T16:23:08.442-07:00The point being: supply shock in this area was not...<i>The point being: supply shock in this area was not merely because of growing demand</i><br /><br />Growing demand creates a demand shock. Increasing real cost of production (in labor hours) causes a supply shock. <br /><br />Do you mean, perhaps that agricultural supply shocks were not only because of decreasing marginal utility of production from using decreasingly fertile land, but also because of static or regressing technology?<br /><br />I'm an economist, not an agronomist. I was simply recapping Malthus' argument, as best I recall it.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-88582753023250621122012-01-14T10:57:22.863-07:002012-01-14T10:57:22.863-07:00A niggling detail related to one of your examples:...A niggling detail related to one of your examples:<br /><br />Agriculture before the industrial revolution in the west (I can say nothing about Asia) was also suffering from the fact that western knowledge about agriculture was... well, it was on a par with what your average modern person knows without doing any research.<br /><br />That is, knowledge of soil chemistry was effectively nil, crop rotation was still a rare thing, people knew about the idea of fertilizer but everyone had their own idea of what made a good one (reportedly, there was even a British farmer who thought SALT was a good fertilizer -- must have been a real peach), and so on ad infinitum. And farmers reacted to early scientific advice with active hostility. (The father of the author of "The Scarlet Pimpernel", for example, was an eastern European rural nobleman who got run off his land by the farmer tenants because he tried to force them to use scientific farming methods.)<br /><br />As a result of all this, agricultural yields were regularly terrible before the industrial revolution, and heavily-used land tended to lose its fertility over time. (Before crop rotation came in, the practice was to allow land to lie fallow to recharge, but not everyone could afford to do this, or cared about whether their fields would still be capable of growing crops in future years.)<br /><br />The point being: supply shock in this area was not merely because of growing demand, it was also because of poor management which was actively reducing (usually unwittingly) the supply. For this reason, I suspect that this example is not a very good one.<br /><br />P.S. I hadn't posted a comment here recently. I like the new posting rules.The Vicarnoreply@blogger.com