FISHER (Irving).
The Nature of Capital and Income.
A family copy of the rare first edition of Fisher’s first published treatise, of central importance to the debate on capital theory, with an autograph note inscribed by the author ‘To my Cousin Margaret Janvier from Irving Fisher’ tipped-in to the front free endpaper, below which is the ownership inscription of ‘Mary Albertson’ dated ‘1913’, with Fisher’s printed business card loosely inserted.
‘With this book Fisher apparently became the first economist to develop a theory of capital (including human capital) on an actuarial and accounting basis. He saw with unprecedented clarity that the economic present is no more than the capitalization of the future and that therefore the economic present is only a synthetic projection of the anticipated future. Fisher demonstrated convincingly that in economics only the future counts, and that past costs have no direct relevance to value. In point of fact, his research resulted in rigorous definition of the bases on which it is possible to ground a valid theory of interest’ (IESS).
Schumpeter stated that the work, ‘besides presenting the first economic theory of accounting, is (or should be) the basis of modern income analysis’ (History of Economic Analysis, p. 872).
