Interest and Prices: A Study of the Causes Regulating the Value of Money

This is the first English language edition of the ground-breaking work on monetary theory by "Sweden’s foremost economic theorist of all time." This edition is scarce in any condition and quite scarce thus in the dust jacket. Wicksell’s work was originally published at Jena by Gustav Fischer in 1898. This first English language edition was translated by R. F. Kahn and published with an introduction by one of Wicksell’s fellow Swedish economists, Bertil Ohlin. It was published by Macmillan "on behalf of the Royal Economic Society" a decade after Wicksell’s death – testimony to the work’s enduring relevance. Condition is very good in a very good dust jacket. The green cloth binding, with blind cover rules and gilt spine rules and print, is square and tight. The lower corners are bumped, the edges show shelf wear, including mild abrasion to the top edges, and the spine is very lightly toned, consonant with the dust jacket condition. The contents retain a crisp feel and show no previous ownership marks, but are age-toned with mild spotting. The dust jacket is unclipped, retaining the original lower front flap price and substantially complete, with only fractional loss to the spine ends and the upper rear face, but nonetheless toned at the spine and flap folds with overall soiling. The jacket is protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.Johan Gustaf Knut Wicksell (1851-1926) was "internationally renowned for his pioneering work in monetary theory" and "is best known forInterest and Prices,his contribution to the fledgling field now called macroeconomics."InGeldzins und Güterpreise(1898;Interest and Prices,1936), Wicksell "propounded an explanation of price-level movements by an aggregate demand-supply analysis focused on the relations between prospective profit and interest rates. This made Wicksell a forerunner of modern monetary theory and anticipated the work of John Maynard Keynes in A Treatise on Money (1930)." It was this work that drew the attention of Ludwig von Mises "to the effects of interest rate manipulation on the capital structure. This was the first to present the idea of the natural rate of interest, which Wicksell argued can be different from the prevailing rate on the market. The natural rate is equal to the return on capital in an imaginary economy without money. Mises took that idea and made it a central component of his business cycle theory. Wicksell was also an important critic of the Quantity Theory of money." Wicksell was "a great innovator in economic theory, principally monetary theory, public finance, and capital theory. But he also devoted himself to economic, social and political issues on a broad front. Wicksell stood out as a social critic of rank, questioning established institutions such as marriage, the church, the monarchy, and the military. All his life he enjoyed a well-founded reputation as an independent radical, always ready to defend and advocate views that were regarded as extreme in public debate. Some have found it perplexing that Wicksell could simultaneously play these two roles: on the one hand, the unassuming academic, on the other, the vociferous agitator." Bertil Gotthard Ohlin (1899-1979), who contributes a lengthy, substantive introduction to this edition, observed of Wicksell: "To me it is a riddle that Knut Wicksell, who for most of his life was a fanatical representative of extreme opinions in the social debate, could present a completely different personality in the scholarly context. During the period when I knew him he was the diffident seeker after scientific truth."Among the young Swedish economists who learned from Wicksell were not only Ohlin, but also Gunnar Myrdal and Dag Hammarskjöld, later secretary general of the United Nations.(References: Econ Journal Watch, Britannica, Mises Institute, Library of Economics and Liberty).…