Original offprint. 8vo. [1], [536]-541, [1] pp. Loose in the original printed wrappers (small stain to fore edge of front wrapper, otherwise very good). Repirnted from The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XXIII, May, 1909.
With the author’s printed compliments slip loosely inserted. The first separate appearance of Fisher’s defence of The Nature of Capital and Income (1906) against the criticism of John R. Commons, being an offprint from The Quarterly Journal of Economics. Commons had reproved Fisher for producing a work of what should properly be identified as ‘business economy’ rather than ‘political economy’, focusing on the mechanisms determining asset valuations through the interplay of private interests without addressing their implications for society’s welfare. Fisher took serious issue with this proposed distinction, and with the implied suggestion that he was indifferent to the societal implications of private market behaviour, insisting that the proper starting point of any analysis should be the ‘causes which actually determine mark valuations’ and that ‘the study of social pathology and therapeutics seems to me to be at the end and not at the beginning of economic analysis’.
Fisher, E-132.
