Books

Fisher's third and rarest book in which he first presented his theory of the determination of interest rates - with an autograph note signed by the author loosely inserted. 'Irving Fisher's The Rate of Interest (1907) is a classic work of twentieth century economics. Together with its later revised version, The Theory of Interest (1930), it articulated the neoclassical theory of interest and capital, drawing together earlier strands of argument in a presentation that provided one of the most influential diagrams in economics, the 'Fisher diagram' showing the allocation of consumption across two periods' (Dimand, Irving Fisher, p. 75). Fisher would later rework and republish the book in 1930 as The Theory of Interest. 'One motivation for the revision was that Fisher's many critics apparently did not understand the 1907 version. They typically concentrated on the 'impatience' side of Fisher's theory of intertemporal allocation and missed the 'opportunities' side. It was there in 1907 already; the theory is much the same in both versions' (New Palgrave).