Overview

Price theory has always been and still is at the heart of economic theory. For the past two and a half centuries, economic theorists have been trying in many different ways to understand and explain the determination of relative prices between goods and services. Usually at a very high degree of sophistication, the profession's brightest minds have been slowly building up this crucial stepping-stone of the entire field of economics analysis. Concentrating exclusively on the primary literature, this multi-volume set brings together for the first time the most significant text of these successive and often conflicting intellectual endeavours to solve this most difficult of all economic issues. Though fully aware of the sometimes fundamental theoretical differences between these various approaches, this choice of texts attempts to suggest an interpretative framework linked to the common method used by successive schools of thought. Described in the crudest possible way, for the past 250 years, economists have been working with one version or another of the so-called gravity theory : long-run, natural or equilibrium reasoning investigates the logical state determination of relative prices by theorists attempting to understand the fundamentals of market (or non-market) economies; short-run, market or disequilibrium reasoning scrutinizes the formation of relative prices, that is, the dynamic process (including, possibly, institutional set-ups) necessary to bring about these natural/equilibrium prices. Even when some modern-day theorists studiously ignored this century-old gravity principle, their approach cannot h From Aristotle's theory of exchange down to the Arrow-Debreu-MacKenzie model of the 1950s, these volumes provide modern economists as well as historians of economic thought with classic texts in the doctrine of just price , the land theory of value, the cost-of-production theory of value, the labour theory of value, and finally, the marginalist revolution at the root of most modern developments in partial and general equilibrium analyses.

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9781851967223

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'This is a well-chosen selection of classical writings about price theory, that 'jewel in the crown' of mainstream economic theory, with a number of sparkling introductions to the various phases of its historyA... make no mistake about it, this is a splendid piece of work.'- Mark Blaug, History of Economic Ideas'This extensive collection...is a useful and illuminating one and offers convenient access to many significant contributions to price theory.'- John K Whitaker, History of Political Economy

'This is a well-chosen selection of classical writings about price theory, that 'jewel in the crown' of mainstream economic theory, with a number of sparkling introductions to the various phases of its history ... make no mistake about it, this is a splendid piece of work.' History of Economic Ideas 'This extensive collection...is a useful and illuminating one and offers convenient access to many significant contributions to price theory.' History of Political Economy

'This is a well-chosen selection of classical writings about price theory, that 'jewel in the crown' of mainstream economic theory, with a number of sparkling introductions to the various phases of its history ... make no mistake about it, this is a splendid piece of work.' History of Economic Ideas

Author Information

Pascal Bridel is at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He is Director of the Walras-Pareto Research Centre and the author and editor of various books and articles in monetary theory and the history of economic thought

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