„Ekonomia instrumentalna” С. E. Ayresa

Abstract

The main issues of Ayresian instrumental economics presented in the paper are: - interpretation of American capitalism made by C. E. Ayres in accordance with the principles of his instrumental economics; - theory of value, presenting a dual concept of values: real values and price values; - criticism of instrumental economics. The paper contains also an evaluation of the views held by Ayres, pointing out the clear definition of the philosophical basis of economic views and the theory of values. The author says that Ayres’s institutional economics is the most developed of all the neoinstitulional attempts at solving that problem and underlines that is not a normative but an empirical and simultaneously a positive science looking for a subject of analysis. In his views, the fundamental drawbacks of the Ayresian theory are the strengthened dependence between philosophy and economics and underestimation of other currents of economic thought and application possibilities of economics such as interindustry methods, theory of games and econometrics.