The Purchasing Power of Money: Its Determination and Relation to Credit Interest and Crises

by Irving Fisher

Of all wealth, man himself is a species. Like his horses or his cattle, he is himself a material object, and like them, he is for if slave, he is owned by another, and if free, by himself. But though human beings may be considered as wealth, human qualities, such as skill, intelligence, and inventiveness, are not wealth. Just as the hardness of steel is not wealth, but merely a quality of one particular kind of wealth, -hard steel, -so the skill of a workman is not wealth, but merely a quality of another particular kind of wealth-skilled workman. Similarly, intelligence is not wealth, but an intelligent man is wealth. -from "Chapter Primary Definitions" Perhaps America's first celebrated economist, Irving Fisher-for whom the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis, and the Fisher separation theorem are named-staked an early claim to fame with his revival, in this 1912 book, of the "quantity theory of money." An important work of 20th-century economics, this work - the circulation of money against goods - the various circulating media - the mystery of circulating credit - how a rise in prices generates a further rise - influence of foreign trade on the quantity of money - the problem of monetary reform - and much more. AUTHOR American economist IRVING FISHER (1867-1947) was professor of political economy at Yale University. Among his many books are Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices (1892), The Rate of Interest (1907), Why Is the Dollar Shrinking? A Study in the High Cost of Living (1914), and Booms and Depressions (1932).

Genres: Economics

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1911

About the author

Irving Fisher was an American economist, inventor, and social campaigner. He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt deflation has been embraced by the Post-Keynesian school.
Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and general equilibrium. He was also a pioneer in the rigurous study of intertemporal choice in markets, which led him to develop a theory of capital and interest rates.[4] His research on the quantity theory of money inaugurated the school of macroeconomic thought known as "monetarism." Both James Tobin and Milton Friedman called Fisher "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced."
Fisher was perhaps the first celebrity economist, but his reputation during his lifetime was irreparably harmed by his public statements, just prior to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, claiming that the stock market had reached "a permanently high plateau." His subsequent theory of debt deflation as an explanation of the Great Depression was largely ignored in favor of the work of John Maynard Keynes. His reputation has since recovered in neoclassical economics, particularly after his work was revived in the late 1950s and more widely due to an increased interest in debt deflation in the Late-2000s recession. Some concepts named after Fisher include the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis, the international Fisher effect, and the Fisher separation theorem.