The nature of capital and income

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 102659555X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-82920

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Fisher, Irving http://d-nb.info/gnd/118533541

Title:: The nature of capital and income

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: The Macmillan Company

Year of publication:: 1923

Scope:: XXI, 427 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2019

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Introduction. Fundamental concepts

Collection:: Economics Books

Sec. 5] UTILITY 47 that the total desirability of any group of goods is the sum of the desirabilities of the successive units. The total desirability of the ten chairs, for instance, is found by add- ing together (1) the desirability of having only one chair, (2) the desirability of having a second chair, (3) a third, (4) a fourth, ete., until ten chairs have been considered. These successive desirabilities will evidently continually diminish. Hence their sum, or the total desirability of the group, is not the same thing as ten times the marginal de- sirability. In this is found the explanation of the fact that the possessor of the chairs regards them as possessing much more total desirability to him than the total desirability of the money which they cost, although the loss of any one of the ten chairs may not represent more desirability than the desirability of the money which that one chair cost. As is well known to all students of the modern theory of value, marginal desirability lies at the root of the deter- mination of value and price. We are lere concerned, however, not in applying the concept of marginal desir- ability to the determination of economic magnitudes, but merely in explaining its nature. Although the definitions which have been given of de- sirability serve to explain its nature, they do not enable us to employ it in a quantitative manner. The exact measurement of desirability is a subject of much impor- tance, as well as of great difficulty. Inasmuch as in the present work only an incidental use will be made of these concepts, it does not seem proper here to enter into these discussions. ! Cf. Fetter’s Principles of Economics, New York, 1904, pp. 25-26. ? See the writer's “ Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices,” Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1893, Vol. IX; Pigou, Economic Journal, March, 1903, Vol. XIII; Pareto, Cours d’Economie Politique, Vol. 1; Giornale d’Economisti, August, 1892; J. B. Clark, “Ultimate Standard of Value,” Yale Review, November, 1892; Seligman, Principles of Eeonomies, Longmans, Green & Co., 1905, Chap. XIII; Chin tao Chen's Societary Circulation, a doctor’s thesis, Yale Univ., 1906.

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