circular flow of income

The circular flow of income or circular flow is a model of the economy in which the major exchanges are represented as flows of money, goods and services, etc. between economic agents. The flows of money and goods exchanged in a closed circuit correspond in value, but run in the opposite direction. The circular flow analysis is the basis of national accounts and hence of macroeconomics.

The idea of the circular flow was already present in the work of Richard Cantillon.Antoin E. Murphy. "John Law and Richard Cantillon on the circular flow of income." ''Journal of the History of Economic Thought.'' 1.1 (1993): 47-62. François Quesnay developed and visualized this concept in the so-called Tableau économique.Backhouse, Roger E., and Yann Giraud. "Circular flow diagrams." in: ''Famous Figures and Diagrams in Economics'' (2010): 221-230. Chapter 23. Important developments of Quesnay's tableau were Karl Marx's reproduction schemes in the second volume of '' Capital: Critique of Political Economy'', and John Maynard Keynes' ''General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money''. Richard Stone further developed the concept for the United Nations (UN) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to the system, which is now used internationally.

Overview

The circular flow of income is a concept for better understanding of the economy as a whole and for example the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs). In its most basic form it considers a simple economy consisting solely of businesses and individuals, and can be represented in a so-called "circular flow diagram." In this simple economy, individuals provide the labour that enables businesses to produce goods and services. These activities are represented by the green lines in the diagram.Measuring the Economy : A Primer on GDP and the National Income and Product Accounts
by Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), U.S. Department of Commerce, October 2014.

Alternatively, one can think of these transactions in terms of the monetary flows that occur. Businesses provide individuals with income (in the form of compensation) in exchange for their labor. That income is spent on the goods and services businesses produce.
These activities are represented by the blue lines in the diagram above.

The circular flow diagram illustrates the interdependence of the “flows,” or activities, that occur in the economy, such as the production of goods and services (or the “output” of the economy) and the income generated from that production. The circular flow also illustrates the equality between the income earned from production and the value of goods and services produced.

Of course, the total economy is much more complicated than the illustration above. An economy involves interactions between not only individuals and businesses, but also Federal, state, and local governments and residents of the rest of the world. Also not shown in this simple illustration of the economy are other aspects of economic activity such as investment in capital (produced—or fixed—assets such as structures, equipment, research and development, and software), flows of financial capital (such as stocks, bonds, and bank deposits),
and the contributions of these flows to the accumulation of fixed assets.

History

Cantillon

One of the earliest ideas on the circular flow was explained in the work of 18th century Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon, who was influenced by prior economists, especially William Petty. Cantillon described the concept in his 1730 '' Essay on the Nature of Trade in General,'' in chapter 11, entitled "The Par or Relation between the Value of Land and Labor" to chapter 13, entitled "The Circulation and Exchange of Goods and Merchandise, as well as their Production, are Carried On in Europe by Entrepreneurs, and at a Risk." Thornton eds. (2010) further explained:
:''Cantillon develops a circular-flow model of the economy that shows the distribution of farm production between property owners, farmers, and workers. Farm production is exchanged for the goods and services produced in the cities by entrepreneurs and artisans. While the property owners are “independent,” the model demonstrates the mutual interdependence between all the classes of people that Adam Smith dubbed the “invisible hand” in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).''
Cantillon distinguished at least five types of economic agents: property owners, farmers, entrepreneurs, labors and artisans, as expressed in the contemporary diagram of the Cantillon's Circular Flow Economy.

Quesnay

François Quesnay further developed these concepts, and was the first to visualize these interactions over time in the so-called Tableau économique. Quesnay believed that trade and industry were not sources of wealth, and instead in his 1758 book ''Tableau économique'' (Economic Table) argued that agricultural surpluses, by flowing through the economy in the form of rent, wages, and purchases were the real economic movers, for two reasons.
* First, regulation impedes the flow of income throughout all social classes and therefore economic development.
* Second, taxes on the productive classes such as farmers should be reduced in favor of higher taxes for unproductive classes such as landowners, since their luxurious way of life distorts the income flow.
The model Quesnay created consisted of three economic agents: The "Proprietary" class consisted of only landowners. The "Productive" class consisted of all agricultural laborers. The "Sterile" class is made up of artisans and merchants. The flow of production and/or cash between the three classes started with the Proprietary class because they own the land and they buy from both of the other classes. Quesnay visualised the steps in the process in the Tableau économique.

Marx

In Marxian economics,