Capital, Interest and Rent: Essays in the Theory of Distribution

by Frank A. Fetter, Murray N. Rothbard (Editor)

Frank Fetter of Princeton University was one of the great American Austrians, and perhaps the most lucid defender of the "pure time preference" theory of interest in the history of economic ideas.Rothbard read him and was impressed, then collected his best work into a single volume, Capital, Interest, and Rent. It functions well as a reader on the Austrian theory of capital and interest. If we are tempted to think of the Austrian perspective as a tiny minority within the profession, this volume shows that the situation has always been more complex. Fetter was not an Austrian from beginning to end, but on this topic no one wrote with more conviction and explanatory power.In the introduction, Rothbard writes of Fetter, "I was struck by the brilliance and consistency of his integrated theory of distribution and by the neglect of Fetter in current histories of economic thought, even by those that are Austrian oriented." The English is beautiful, and the logic is rigorous. B

Genres: Economics

400 pages, Paperback

First published June 23, 1897

About the author

Frank Albert Fetter was an American economist. He was accepted to the Indiana University in 1879 , only sixteen years of age. He was on the point of graduating in 1883 when he left the university to run the bookstore of his parents because of health problems of his father. Eight years later he returned and completed his B.A. in 1891.
In 1892, he became a fellow at Cornell University, President White School of History and Political Science and he earned his Master of Philosophy degree. He then went on to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, France and he earned his Ph.D. in 1894 from the University of Halle, Germany.
He teached at Cornell for a while, the accepted a position as a professor at Indiana University. In 1898 he left for Stanford University, where he resigned after three years over a dispute regarding academic freedom. Fetter went back to Cornell, and stayed there for ten years. In 1911, he became the chairman of Princeton University's Department of Economics and Social institutions.
In 1909, he was awarded an honorary LL.D. from Colgate University. In 1913 he was became president of the American Economic Association. Other honorary doctoral degrees were given to him by Occidental College in 1930 and Indiana University in 1934. In 1927, he received the Karl Menger Medal by the Austrian Economic Society.