THE FIRST FULLY DEVELOPED THEORY OF VALUE - COINING "IMPUTATION"

WIESER, FRIEDRICH VON.

Der Natürliche Werth.

Wien, Alfred Hölder, 1889.

8vo. Uncut in the original printed yellow wrappers. Light soiling and a few minor nicks to extremities. A very fine and clean copy. XVI, 239 pp.

First edition, rarely seen in the original wrappers, of this important work in which Wieser attempts to apply marginal utility analysis to the determination of cost, thus for the first time fully developing a theory of value. The work "ranks high as an original achievement" and is one of the very earliest to realize the information value of prizes. It is furthermore here that the term "imputation" is coined.

"It was only with Friedrich von Wieser's book [the present] that an attempt was made to fill the lacuna left by Menger and Böhm-Bawerk. Wieser makes it clear that without a solution to the problem of 'imputation' the new theory would remain incomplete and would be subjected to the widespread criticism that it cannot deal with production. The problem is posed as follows" 'The statement that the productive goods receive their value from the value of their produce suffices only to evaluate [schätzen] the collaborating factors of production as a whole, but not separately. In order to be able to do also this, a rule is needed which allows one to apportion the total produce in detail.'(Wieser, 1889)." (Steedman, Socialism & Marginalism in Economics 1870 - 1930).

"[H]e continued to work on the same problems and also on what he regarded merely as a first step toward a theory of value that was to be fully developed in [the present work]. He employed the expository device of studying value in a centrally directed economy and suggested possible applications of utility theory to public finance. The book gained him almost immediate acclaim, and it was soon translated into English" (Frederich von Hayek in IESS).

"[In the present work he] worked out the Austrian theories of cost and distribution (he coined the phrase 'Zurechnung', imputation), which Menger had not more than sketched, and this work must in spite of the latter fact and also in spite of glaring faults of technique, rank high as an original achievement. (Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis)

"In this work he applied the marginal utility theory not only horizontally, i.e. to trading and exchange, but also vertically, i.e. to production processes. He defined the value of higher goods produced alongside them, thus developing his imputation theory. Wieser, who possessed a certain "obsession with compulsive computability" is recognized as one of the first economist to realize the information value of prices." (Schulak, the Austrian School of Economics).

Masui p. 909
Menger col. 395.

Order-nr.: 50373