ROSCHER (William [Wilhelm Georg Friedrich]).

Principles of Political Economy.

With Additional Chapters Furnished by the Author, for this first English and American edition, on Paper Money, International Trade, and the Protective System; and a Preliminary Essay on the Historical Method in Political Economy (From the French) by L. Wolowski.

Translated by John J Lalor. First edition in English. Two volumes. 8vo. xxi, [3], 464; [6], 465, [1] pp. Original brick-red cloth, spines lettered and ruled in gilt, covers with double blind fillet borders, brown coated endpapers (contemporary ownership inscriptions to front free endpapers, some later neat pencilled annotations to rear endpapers, corners slightly bumped, some minor chipping to tips of spines, notwithstanding a good set). New York, Henry Holt & Co, 1878.

£350.00

Roscher’s main work, originally published in German in 1854, which “became perhaps the most widely-read textbook of economics in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century” (Blaug). “It analysed essentially the same topics as the classical economists - production, distribution and prices. Roscher was already strongly influenced by supply and demand approaches, but still determined the exchange value of a commodity by its cost of production. His theory of rent was Ricardian and his thinking about population development followed Malthusian patterns. Differing from classical textbooks, Roscher supplemented the theoretical analysis with a historical description - the reader finds the history of rent, interest and wages, of population development, of the prices of necessary and luxury commodities, and of luxury in general” (Schefold in The New Palgrave).

The present English translation was published simultaneously in Chicago and New York.

See Blaug, Great Economists before Keynes, p. 208.

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