The Nature and Fundamental Elements of Costs

Abstract

The historical development of the theory of costs has been away from the disutility analysis of the classicists. — The view that costs are payments for the means of production, arising out of the resistances which they occasion, and set in a competitive price-bidding process, 36. — These resistances resolved into eight scarcity-factors, which are the fundamental elements of costs, 41. — The analysis applied to costs encountered in business enterprise: wages, interest, rents, depreciation, insurance, taxes, and profits. — All can be broken down into the eight elements named 47. — The introduction of monopoly profits into the prices of materials necessitates a distinction between competitive and restrictive costs, 59. — This analysis of costs suggests that an approach to the theory of distribution along similar lines would be fruitful, 62.