Foundations of Economic Analysis.

SAMUELSON, Paul A.

$1,750.00

Item Number: 2136

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948.

First edition, second printing published one year after the first edition. Octavo, original red cloth. Signed by Paul Samuelson on the title page. Fine in a very good price-clipped dust jacket with light wear to the spine tips. Foundations of Economic Analysis ranks as one of the most influential economic texts of the 20th century.

Paul Samuelson is one of the developers of both neo-Keynesian and neoclassical economics, the latter of which still dominates mainstream economics. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1970 for having written considerable parts of economic theory. One of Samuelson's many novel contributions was that he generalized and applied mathematical methods developed for the study of thermodynamics to the field of economics. His inspiration for doing so came, in part, from his mentor, polymath Edwin Bisdwell Wilson who was a former Yale student of the founder of chemical thermodynamics, Willard Gibbs. Samuelson, therefore, is a successful example of interdisciplinarity, and he combined these ideas in his magnum opus Foundations of Economic Analysis.