Jevons, William Stanley. Sun-spots and Commercial Crises. London: Nature, 1879. 1st edition. In: Nature, a Weekly Illustrated Journal of Science, pp 588-590 8vo. Wrappers. This is the weekly issue for 24 April 1879, and although the Jevons article occupies only 588-590 it contains some 3000 words. This is the weekly issue of Nature, with its original wrappers, removed from a larger bound volume. $250.00
This is a very early example of statistical interpretation in economic research. "Jevons studied natural science, and worked as an assayer to the Australian Mint from 1853 to 1859. He became Professor of Logic at Owens College, Manchester, in 1866 and in 1876 at University College, London. His main theoretical economic work is Theory of Political Economy (1871). Other aspects of his work are collected together in Investigations in Currency and Finance (1884). He was one of the three economists to put forward a marginal utility theory in the 1870s. He argued that one commodity will exchange for another such that the ratio of the prices of the two commodities traded equals the ratio of their marginal utilities. Edgeworth criticized the way Jevons developed these ideas, and in so doing invented the indifference curve. Jevons also made an important contribution to the theory of capital, many aspects of which were, in fact, taken up by the Austrian school. He superimposed on the classical economic theory the idea that capital should be measured in terms of time as well as quantity. An increase in the amount invested is the same as an increase in the time period in which it is being employed. Output can be increased by extending the period in which the investment is available by, for instance, reinvesting the output instead of consuming it at the end of the production period. With given levels of labour and capital, output becomes a function of time only. He derived from this a definition of the rate of interest as the ratio of the output gained, by an increase in the time capital remains invested divided by the amount invested (see Böhm-Bawerk, E. von; internal rate of return). Jevons was also one of the founders of econometrics: he invented moving averages." See Gossen, H. H.; Menger, C.; Walras, M. E. L.
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