Irving Fisher

Irving Fisher (1867-1947) was an American economist, statistician and commentator on public events. He was born at Saugerties, N.Y., Feb. 27, 1867. He was graduated from Yale College in 1888, and received his Ph.D. degree from Yale in 1891, then studied in Berlin and Paris. From 1890 onward he was at Yale as tutor, then becoming professor of political economy in 1898, and professor emeritus in 1935. He edited the Yale Review from 1896 to 1910. He was active in many learned societies, institutes, and welfare organizations, and was an outstanding proponent of econometrics in its historical development. Among his special interests were temperance, eugenics, public health, and world peace. He won a New York Medical Society prize for the invention of a tent for the treatment of tuberculosis victims. He strongly supported prohibition in the 1920s, and his optimistic predictions about the economy proved false with the Great Depression. He was, however, the only economist in 1928 predicting that a major recession would soon occur and, according to him, this debt-induced recession was unavoidable, but the Great Depression could had been avoided: "I believe some of the crash was inevitable because of over-indebtedness, but the depression was not inevitable. The reason is that the deflation which went with the over-indebtedness was not necessary." .

Tobin (1985) argues the intellectual breakthroughs that mark the neoclassical revolution in economic analysis occurred in Europe around 1870. The next two decades witnessed lively debates in which the new theory more or less absorbed or was absorbed in the classical tradition that preceded and provoked it. In the 1890s, according to Joseph A. Schumpeter (1928), The Theory of Interest: As determined by the impatience to spend income and opportunity to invest it (1930), Booms and Depressions (1932), The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions (Econometrica, 1933) and 100% Money (1935). He died in New York City, Apr. 30, 1947.

Bibliography

• Allen, Robert Loring. Irving Fisher: A Biography (1993) online excerpt
• Joseph Dorfman. The Economic Mind in American Civilization (1958) vol 3.
• Fellner, William, ed. Ten Economic Studies in the Tradition of Irving Fisher (1967)
• Geanakoplos, John and Dimand, Robert W., ed. Celebrating Irving Fisher: The Legacy of a Great Economist (2005)
• Samuelson, Paul. "Irving Fisher and the Theory of Capital," in Fellner (1967)
• Tobin, James. "Neoclassical Theory in America: J. B. Clark and Fisher" American Economic Review (Dec 1985) vol 75#6 pp 28-38in JSTOR

External Links

• Irving Fisher, 1867-1947, History of Economic Thought Website - HET
• Fisher, Irving. Discussion by Professor Irving Fisher (On the causes of the Great Depression)
• Veblen, Thorstein B. Fisher's Capital and Income. Political Science Quarterly, volume 23, (1908)
• Veblen, Thorstein B. Fisher's Rate of Interest. Political Science Quarterly, vol 24, (1909)

References

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