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ON GOODS AND SERVICES
Author(s) -
Hill T. P.
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4991.1977.tb00021.x
Subject(s) - goods and services , public good , economics , intangible good , service (business) , externality , private good , meaning (existential) , inflation (cosmology) , microeconomics , public economics , economy , psychology , physics , theoretical physics , psychotherapist
The paper is concerned with the concept, definition and measurement of a service. Although services are often dismissed as immaterial goods, they are not special kinds of goods and belong in a quite different logical category from goods. The search for appropriate units of quantity in which to measure services is not an idle metaphysical pursuit. Without quantity units there can be no prices, and most economic theory becomes irrelevant. Indeed, large parts of economic theory may be irrelevant to the analysis of services anyway, precisely because they are not goods which can be exchanged among economic units. Services are as important as goods in modern developed economies and they need to be identified and quantified properly if the measurement of economic growth and inflation is to have any meaning for the economy as a whole. The concept of a service is explained in some detail in the paper, and various ways in which services can be classified for purposes of economic analysis are elaborated. The distinction between private and public goods, or rather between private and collective services, is re‐examined in the light of the general concept of a service proposed in the paper. Externalities are shown to be simply special kinds of services.