INSCRIBED BY INFLUENTIAL ECONOMIST JOHN MAURICE CLARK TO HIS FRIENDS, WELL-KNOWN SCIENTISTS CARYL AND EDNA HASKINS

CLARK, John Maurice. Competition as a Dynamic Process. Washington: The Brookings Institution, (1961). Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket. $850.

First edition of this influential economics work framing labor as an overhead cost, inscribed to his friends, prominent scientists Caryl and Edna Haskins: “To Caryl and Edna Haskins with best wishes: J.M. Clark.”

Clark, the son (and sometime collaborator) of noted economist John Bates Clark, taught for more than 30 years at Columbia. "To Clark, overhead costs were those that 'do not vary with output' or 'are not traced to units of output… His treatment of labor as an overhead cost, with its implications for social policies regarding employment and reducing the fluctuations of the business cycle, was unusual for the time. Clark argued that the nature of overhead costs led to the development of monopoly power and price discrimination, as well as to generating social costs and influencing changes in the business cycle. He further contended that overhead costs meant that perfect competition could not exist and that more attention needed to be paid to the dynamic rather than the static characteristics of the economy" (DAB). The co-inscribee, Caryl Haskins, was the preeminent biophysicist and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who also founded Haskins Laboratories and was a trustee emeritus of the National Geographic Society. Edna Haskins, Caryl Haskins' wife, was a prominent physical chemist who made great contributions in Britain during the Second World War eventually becoming the first woman to be named His Majesty's Inspector of Factories in the Ministry of Labor and National Service.

Book fine. Dust jacket with a few small chips to front panel. An extremely good copy, scarce signed.