CHAPTER 5

THE PLURALITY OF SECONDARY PRICE-LEVELS

The pioneer in distinguishing the different types ofprice-levels from one another was Edgeworth. The firstthorough Classification of Index-Numbers of Prices wasthat prepared by him in his Memoranda for the BritishAssociation (1887 to 1889), which still remain themost important discussions of this matter. He theredistinguishes six leading types—the Capital Standard,the Consumption Standard, the Currency Standard,the Income Standard , the Indefinite Standard andthe Production Standard. Nearly forty years later(Economic Journal, vol. xxxv. (1925) p. 379) Edge-worth classified index-numbers into three leadingtypes—Index-Numbers representing Welfare, Un-weighted Index-Numbers and the Labour Standard.Of these three categories the first and third correspondto variants of the Consumption and Earnings Stand-ards as defined above ; and the second, in respect ofwhich I have a fundamental difference of opinion withEdgeworth, will be dealt with in the second sectionof Chapter 6.

But in addition to these fundamental price-levels,we have a plurality of secondary price-levels corre-sponding, not to the general purchasing power ofmoney over consumption as a whole or over effort asa whole, but to its purchasing power for special pur-poses ; as, for example, the purchasing power of moneyover staple commodities at wholesale, or over bonds

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