THÜNEN, Johann Heinrich von.

£1,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Recherches sur l'influence que le prix des grains la richesse du sol et les impots exercent sur les systèmes de culture; First edition in French of the first two volumes of von Thünen's magnum opus Der isolirte Staat, originally published in German in 1826 and 1850, and containing his theory of the natural wage; the first volume a presentation copy from the translator, inscribed on the front wrapper "A Mr. Delmar hommage respectueux Laverrière". Thünen introduces the question of functional income distribution in accordance with the principle of marginal productivity. Grounding the whole analysis in his own empirical estimates of production relations in agriculture, he provided an extraordinarily modern exposition of the marginal productivity theory of distribution. "If we judge [Thünen and Ricardo] exclusively by the amount of ability of the purely theoretical kind that went into their work, then, I think, Thünen should be placed above Ricardo or indeed above any economist of the period, with the possible exception of Cournot" (Schumpeter p. 465)."Thünen was the first to develop an exact definition of marginal productivity in the modern sense (although he did not use the term) and to apply the principle generally in the theory of production and distribution. He was a founder of mathematical economics and of econometrics, combining systematic empirical research with a genius for abstract reasoning and generalization... Von Thünen's book won him considerable recognition during

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