708 
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 applica- 
tions 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 sub- 
sequent work; 
my study of the influence of the capitalistic structure on 
the difference between French and United States producti- 
vity, published in « Le Monde » in autumn 1948; 
my paper for the 1955 Congress of French language econo- 
mists, in which the exponential model was presented for 
the first time: 
my paper for the 1960 Congress of the International Insti- 
tute of Statistics, held in Tokyo. This study contained an 
overall assessment of the exponential model together with 
many numerical applications: 
11 | Allais - pag. 12