A History of Marginal Utility Theory

271 Pages·2016·8.591 MB·English

by  Emil Kauder

A HISTORY O F
MARGINAL U T I L I T Y T H E O R Y

A HISTORY OF
MARGINAL UTILITY THEORY
BY EMIL KAUDER
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
1965
Copyright © 1965 by Princeton University Press
All Rights Reserved · L.C. Card: 65-10827
Publication of this book
has been aided by the Ford Foundation
program to support publication,
through university presses, of works in the humanities
and social sciences.
Printed in the United States of America
by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
T O H E L E N E

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I GLADLY acknowledge my great indebtedness to an anony­
mous foundation which financed my work and the travel
connected with it. My special thanks are due to many
people for help in finding material and writing the text,
for valuable comments, and for the ideas they inspired.
My wife read, criticized, and typed a great part of the first
draft. Mr. William Rogers, Miss Eva Maged, Mrs. Joan
Irwin, and Mrs. Lois Willhoite typed the final draft. Rich­
ard Schuller and Karl Menger, Jr., told me all they re­
membered about Carl Menger the economist and his stu­
dents. Ludwig von Mises, Oskar Morgenstern, Fritz Mach-
lup, Gottfried von Haberler, Joseph Dorfman, and the
late Otto Weinberger provided very valuable suggestions.
Oskar Morgenstern, Karl Borch, Robert Meacham, Dud­
ley South, Morton Davis, and Forrest Dristy helped
me with the mathematical analysis. Of course these mathe­
maticians are not responsible for any possible mistakes
which remain and which are my own. The libraries here
and in Japan did everything to further my work. I men­
tion with gratitude especially Professor Taizo Takahashi,
President of Hitotsubashi University, Dr. Foster Palmer,
Librarian of the Widener Library, Professor Yamaguzi,
Mr. Okasaki, and Mrs. Sunagawa from the Hitotsubashi
Library, and the many others who have helped me.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Object and Method xv
PART I: THE GENESIS OF MARGINAL UTILITY 1
Chapter I. The Philosophical Background 3
Consumer Value and Cost Theory 3
Thomism versus Puritanism 4
The Glorification of Labor 5
Welfare, Hedonism, and Aristotle 7
Value Theory and the Intellectual Convictions
of the Nineteenth Century 9
Chapter II. Value-in-Use: The Forerunner of
the Marginal Utility Theory 15
Aristotle's Value-in-Use 15
Buridanus 17
The Italian Economists from Lottini to
Galiani 19
The Followers of Galiani and the Declining
Interest in the Utility Discussion 25
Chapter III. Marginalists before Gossen 30
Repetition and Lack of Cooperation 30
The Role of Calculus 31
Bernoulli's Discovery 32
Bentham 35
Galiani, Lloyd and the Consumer Behavior 38