Capital theory traditionally spans two major compartments of economic theory: the theory of production of both individual products and the total product, and the theory of the distribution of the aggregate product between the different classes of capitalist society. It has always been controversial, partly because the subject matter is difficult and partly because rival ideologies and value systems impinge directly on the subject matter. In the present book the various topics associated with the exchanges between the 'neo-Keynesians' and the 'neo-neoclassicals' are discussed and evaluated. The topics include the measurement of capital, the revival of interest in Irving Fisher's rate of return on investment, the double-switching debate, Sraffa's prelude to a critique of neoclassical theory, and the 'new' theories of the rate of profits in capitalist society.

This long-overlooked manifesto of capital theory was Hayek's most detailed work in economics. With a new introduction by Hayek expert Lawrence H. White, it is now available again for today's students and economists to discover.

This book proposes a “representational” theory of capital according to which there is a relation between capital goods in the real side of the economy and instruments representative of property claims on those goods in the abstract side. Financial instruments are treated herein as a particularly liquid form of property claim. The relation proposed between these two things is a loose rather than a direct one, and the causes for (and consequences of) the looseness are explored in the book. This book aims not merely to simplify our understanding of the relationship between “things” and “claims to things,” but to make explicit and precise what many current researchers assume implicitly and, consequently, imprecisely. This book will be a tool that researchers can apply to their own research, in the form of a standard by which inconsistencies in the literature on Capital Theory can be identified. Understanding what capital is requires delving into its nature on both the real and the abstract sides. In regard to capital goods, what they actually are is made clearer by the thesis that they exist on a spectrum with respect to consumer goods. In going back to the philosophical and economic basics, no claim is made of being comprehensive. The argument is that a crucial idea for our understanding of what capital is that actual capital goods (and processes, and knowledge) are represented in financial instruments and other property claims. A formal treatment that lays out the philosophical and economic basics is necessary to put this idea across, and the model proposed in the book is a first step in that direction. Further, by laying out the philosophical and economic basics of the theory, the book offers the reader the reasons why having a clearer concept of capital is an important tool for wealth creation, and why wealth creation is, more than never, necessary for our individual wellbeing and the flourishing of our civilization.

Von Boehm-Bawerk is one of the leading economists of the so-called Austrian school. With Karl Menger and others, he has contributed to the development of a theory of value which has received wide acceptance, and has been the cause of still wider discussion, in the economic world. This theory, as elaborated by Boehm von Bawerk, is based largely upon psychological principles. Its chief feature consists in a searching analysis of ‘subjective value.’ In his “Capital and Interest”, the author makes a brilliant and original study of these two subjects. “The Positive Theory of Capital” is the successor to the work mentioned above.