Foundations of Economic Analysis.

SAMUELSON, Paul.

Item Number: 2801

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947.

First edition of the author’s magnum opus and one of the most influential economic texts of the twentieth century. Octavo, original burgundy cloth with titles in gilt. Signed by Paul Samuelson on the title page. An excellent near fine copy with light wear to the bottom edges in the rare dust jacket, which shows some toning to the front panel and a few small chips to the crown. Housed in a custom quarter morocco clamshell box. Exceptionally rare in the original dust jacket and signed.

"Fifty years after it was written, "Foundations of Economic Analysis" (together with Hicks’ Value and Capital) is still one of the most inspiring classics of general equilibrium economics" (Niehans, History of Economic Theory). 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 for having written considerable parts of economic theory, and he is one of the ten Nobel Prize winning economists still signing the Economist's statement opposing the Bush tax cuts. 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 (1947).