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PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA - 28

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this study is to present a general theory of
the role of capital in economic development.
Although there are numerous suggestive practical applications
 of this theory, the limited space at my disposition obliges
me to concentrate mainly on the development of its major
theoretical aspects.
This paper follows a long sequence of earlier publications,
and it tries to give a general and rigorous presentation of the
results obtained earlier.

In chronological order these publications are:
my Treatise of Pure Economic Theory (1943) in which I
generalized the theory of optimum allocation of resources
for the case of an efficient path over time;
my book Economie et Intérét (Economy and Interest)
(1947), in which are set forth the general principles of the
theory of capital which have been the basis of all my subsequent
 work;
my study of the influence of the capitalistic structure on
the difference between French and United States productivity,
 published in « Le Monde » in autumn 1948;
my paper for the 1955 Congress of French language economists,
 in which the exponential model was presented for
the first time:

my paper for the 1960 Congress of the International Institute
 of Statistics, held in Tokyo. This study contained an
overall assessment of the exponential model together with
many numerical applications:

11 | Allais - pag. 12