Some General Remarks On The Successive Stages Method in Planning with an Adhoc Consideration of the Time Lag Effects on the Economy's Development

In the sequence I shall give a brief general outline of what is meant by planning in stages and analyse the effect of introducing in the analysis the concept of a time-lag, specially its effect in the case of an expanding economy. I shall not, however, comment or discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the method of national planning in stages in this rather short paper. This will be found together with a detailed analysis of that method, as well as a detailed analysis of the Simultaneous national planning method with comments on it, in my forth-coming research-work: National planning in stages Versus Simultaneous National Planning, The method of Planning in stages (two stages of more) consists mainly of choosing at the first stage, total production and total investment, looked at as aggregates for the years of the program or the plan. At the Second stage the choice is of the composition of production for each year separately. In the first stage the assumption of the existence of one single gestation period and one single price level can be given. first stage aims at determining the future course of production by choosing an optimum program of investment for the future as a whole. One of the principles upon which an optimum program of investment may rest is the maximization of utility over time, also the maximization of justice between present and future generations can be taken into considerations.