Publisher's full forest-green cloth. Spine lettered in gilt. Top edge darkened. Spine is sunned with a bit of chipping to top ot the hinge. A pinhole in the cloth of the spine. Otherwise a very good copy.
Cournot (1801-1877) was the first “to visualise the general interdependence of all economic quantities and the necessity of representing this cosmos by a system of equations” (Schumpeter, p. 467). “Cournot...deserves notice as the first who successfully applied mathematics to political economy...His Recherches sur les les Principes Mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses, published 1838, is still the best statement in mathematical form of some of the highest generalisations in economic science. This work may be summarised under three headings: pure theory of price, abstract propositions on taxation, and miscellaneous applications of mathematical reasoning. I. Cournot appears to have been the first to represent by means of an equation, or curve, the relation between the price of a commodity and the quantity saleable at that price in a market consisting of purchasers competing with each other...II. The formulæ which take account of cost are well adapted to investigate the effect of a tax which may be regarded as an increase in cost of production...The most remarkable results obtained by Cournot’s method are those which relate to a tax on the importation or exportation of a commodity subject to the law of diminishing returns. Cournot finds that the price in the importing country may possibly be lowered by the imposition of the tax...III. Among miscellaneous topics treated mathematically there occurs first variation in general prices” (Palgrave I, pp. 445-446).
HBS # 65790 $1,000
