TAUSSIG (Frank W.)
Wages and Capital. An Examination of the Wages Fund Doctrine.
The principal work of the American economist Frank W. Taussig (1859-1940), being his classic intervention on the subject of the wage-fund doctrine. In particular, Taussig brought to task the assumption shared by economists from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill and beyond that wages are paid from capital, highlighting instead the distinct roles played by past and present labour in the production of the wage fund.
Taussig was appointed professor of economics at Harvard University in 1892, a position he would hold for almost 50 years, and served as editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics from 1889 to 1890 and from 1896 to 1935. Taussig is credited with creating the foundations of modern international trade theory and would exert considerable influence upon the development of American economics in the first third of the twentieth-century. “For some people, notably Joseph A. Schumpeter, who Taussig brought to Harvard, he was the ‘American Marshall’, ranking him with the eminent English economist, Alfred Marshall” (Johnson and Samuels, p. 14).
