Added to your basket:
Mathematical investigations in the theory of value and prices. 

Checkout now

Presentation copy, inscribed ‘To Mr. J.W.L. [sic] Rowe with the compliments of Irving Fisher, March, 1927’, of the second edition in book form, a photo-engraved reprint of Fisher’s doctoral thesis, first published in the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1892.  This contribution received, on appearance, a glowing review from Edgeworth, who ventured to ‘predict to Dr. Fisher the degree of immortality which belongs to one who has deepened the foundations of the pure theory of Economics’ (The Economic Journal, Mar., 1893, Vol. 3, No. 9 p. 112). 

At the time of the inscription Rowe was working on his monograph on the standards of living, Wages in practice and theory, which was published the following year.  Fisher’s innovative introduction of the ‘unit of utility’, and his identification of basic foodstuff prices (loaf of bread) or manual labour as ideal criteria must have provided Rowe’s inquiry into living standards with an invaluable econometric tool: ‘By these standards [the statistician] could measure and correct the money-standard, and if the utility curves for various classes of articles were constructed, he could make rough statistics of total utility, total disutility, gain, and utility-value which would have considerable meaning.  Men are much alike in their digestion and fatigue.  If a food or a labour standard is established, it can be easily applied to the utilities in regard to which men are unlike, as of clothes, houses, furniture, books, works of art, &c.’. 

This edition not listed in Fisher. 

You may also be interested in...

RICARDO, David.

The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, edited by Piero Sraffa with the Collaboration of M.H. Dobb.

First comprehensive edition of the works of the political economist David Ricardo (1772–1823).

Read more

RICARDO, David.

Zasady ekonomji politycznej i podatkowania.

Second and most complete Polish edition of On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (first published in 1817), in a new translation by Dr. M. Bronstein. The 1826 first Polish translation by Stanislaw Kunatt was based on the translation into French by the Portuguese journalist Francisco Solano Constâncio. The latter translation had been made from the very first English edition which was subsequently revised and expanded, thus the 1826 edition was incomplete, and contained some inaccuracies. The present translation, i.e. the first complete edition in Polish, was based on the then latest English edition (London, G. Bell, 1913, edited by E. C. K. Gonner). Bronstein aims at introducing precise and modern terminology and – at the same time – staying as close as possible to the English original.

Read more