| |
| 经济学家日历：欧文·费雪 |
作者： 发布时间：2007-11-25 15:39:53 来源： 点击数：165
|
Irving Fisher
(February 27, 1867 Saugerties, New York — April 29, 1947, New York)
欧文·费雪（1867－1947）耶鲁大学教授、经济学家，主要贡献：货币理论的原则
费雪被公认为美国第一位数理经济学家，他使经济学变成了一门更精密的科学。他提高了现代对于货币量和总体物价水平之间关系的认识。他的交换方程大概是解释通货膨胀的原因的理论中最成功的。费雪认为可以保持总体物价水平的稳定，而价格水平的稳定会使得整个经济保持稳定。1923年，他创办了数量协会，是第一家以数据形式向大众提供系统指数信息的组织。费雪是经济计量学发展的领导者，加大了统计方法在经济理论中的应用。
（来源：http://www.bartleby.com/130/）
Irving Fisher, 1867-1947.
Irving Fisher was one of the earliest American Neoclassicals of unusual mathematical sophistication.He made numerous important contributions to the Neoclassical Marginalist Revolution, of which the following are but a sample:
(1) his contributions to the Walrasian theory of equilibrium price (he also invented the indifference curve device) in 1892;
(2) his volumes on the theory of capital and investment (1896, 1898, 1906, 1907, 1930) which brought the Austrian intertemporal theories into the English-speaking world, wherein he introduced the famous distinction between "stocks" and flows", the Fisher Separation Theorem and the loanable funds theory of interest rates.
(3) his famous resurrection of the Quantity Theory of Money (1911, 1932, 1935);
(4) the theory of index numbers (1922);
(5) the Phillips Curve (1926)
(6) his debt-deflation theory (1933) which is echoed in Post Keynesian economics.
This Yale economist was an eccentric and colorful figure.When Irving Fisher wrote his 1892 dissertation, he constructed a remarkable machine equipped with pumps, wheels, levers and pipes in order to illustrate his price theory - see here for pictures of his draft and his first and second prototypes.Socially, he was an avid advocate of eugenics and health food diets. Hemade a fortune with his visible index card system - known today as the rolodex - and advocated the establishment of an 100% reserve requirement banking system His fortune was lost and his reputation was severely marred by the 1929 Wall Street Crash, when just days before the crash, he was reassuring investors that stock prices were not overinflated but, rather, had achieved a new, permanent plateau.
Major works of Irving Fisher
Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices, 1892.
Appreciation and Interest, 1896.
"The Role of Capital in Economic Theory", 1897, EJ.
"Precedents for Definining Capital" , 1898, QJE.
The Nature of Capital and Income, 1906.
The Rate of Interest, 1907.
National Vitality, its wastes and conservation, 1910.
"The Equation of Exchange, 1896-1910", 1911, AER
"Recent Changes in Price Levels and Their Causes", 1911, AER - discussion
The Purchasing Power of Money: Its determination and relation to credit, interest and crises, 1911.
""The Equation of Exchange" for 1911, and Forecast", 1912, AER
"An International Commission on Cost of Living", 1912, AER
"Will the Present Upward Trend of World Prices Continue?", 1912, AER
Elementary Principles of Economics, 1912.
"A Remedy for the Rising Cost of Living: Standardizing the Dollar", 1913, AER
""The Equation of Exchange" for 1912, and Forecast", 1913, AER
"The Impatience Theory of Interest", 1913, AER.
"Objections to a Compensated Dollar Answered", 1914, AER
Why is the Dollar Shrinking? A study in the high cost of living, 1914.
After the war, what?A plea for a league of peace.1914.
"Review of Auspitz and Lieben's Theory of Price", 1915, AER
"Some Contributions of the War to Our Knowledge of Money and Prices (Abstract)", 1918, AER
"Is "Utility" the Most Suitable Term for the Concept It is Used to Denote?", 1918, AER.
"Economists in Public Service", 1919, AER.
"Stabilizing the Dollar", 1919, AER
"Consideration of the Proposal to Stabilize the Unit of Money: Rejoinder", 1919, AER
Stabilizing the Dollar, 1920.
The Making of Index Numbers: A study of their varieties, tests and reliability, 1922.
"The Statistical Relation Between Unemployment and Price Changes", 1926, International Labor Review
Prohibition at its Worst, 1927.
The Money Illusion, 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", 1933, Econometrica.
Inflation, 1933.
Stamp Scrip, 1933.
100% Money, 1935.
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/fisher.htm
Irving Fisher (1867-1947)
Irving Fisher was one of America's greatest mathematical economists and one of the clearest economics writers of all time. He had the intellect to use mathematics in virtually all his theories and the good sense to introduce it only after he had clearly explained the central principles in words. And he explained very well. Fisher's Theory of Interest is written so clearly that graduate economics students, who still study it today, often find that they can read—and understand—half the book in one sitting. With other writings in technical economics, this is unheard of.
Although he damaged his reputation by insisting throughout the Great Depression that recovery was imminent, contemporary economic models of interest and capital are based on Fisherian principles. Similarly, monetarism is founded on Fisher's principles of money and prices.
Fisher called interest "an index of a community's preference for a dollar of present [income] over a dollar of future income." He labeled his theory of interest the "impatience and opportunity" theory. Interest rates, Fisher postulated, result from the interaction of two forces: the "time preference" people have for capital now, and the investment opportunity principle (that income invested now will yield greater income in the future). This reasoning sounds very much like B鰄m-Bawerk's. Indeed, Fisher's Theory of Interest was dedicated to "the memory of John Rae and of Eugen von B鰄m-Bawerk, who laid the foundations upon which I have endeavored to build." But Fisher objected to B鰄m-Bawerk's idea that roundaboutness necessarily increases production. Instead, argued Fisher, at a positive interest rate, no one would ever choose a longer period unless it were more productive. So if we look at processes selected, we do find that longer periods are more productive. But, he argued, the length of the period does not in itself contribute to productivity.
Fisher defined capital as any asset that produces a flow of income over time. A flow of income, said Fisher, was distinct from the stock of capital that generated it. Capital and income are linked by the interest rate. Specifically, wrote Fisher, the value of capital is the present value of the flow of (net) income that the asset generates. This still is how economists think about capital and income today.
Fisher also opposed conventional income taxation and favored a tax on consumption to replace it. His position followed directly from his capital theory. When people save out of current income and then use the savings to invest in capital goods that yield income later, noted Fisher, they are being taxed on the income that they used to buy the capital goods and then are being taxed later on the income that the capital generates. This, he said, is double taxation of saving, and biases the tax code against saving and in favor of consumption. Fisher's reasoning is still used by economists today in making the case for consumption taxes.
Fisher was a pioneer in the construction and use of price indexes. James Tobin of Yale has called Fisher "the greatest expert of all time on index numbers." Indeed, from 1923 to 1936, his own Index Number Institute computed price indexes from all over the world.
Fisher was also the first economist to distinguish clearly between real and nominal interest rates. He pointed out that the real interest rate is equal to the nominal interest rate (the one we observe) minus the expected inflation rate. If the nominal interest rate is 12 percent, for example, but people expect inflation of 7 percent, then the real interest rate is only 5 percent. Again, this is still the basic understanding of modern economists.
Fisher laid out a more modern quantity theory of money (i.e., monetarism) than had been done before. He formulated his theory in terms of the Equation of Exchange, which says that MV = PT, where M equals the stock of money; V equals velocity, or how quickly money circulates in an economy; P equals the price level; and T equals the total volume of transactions. Again, modern economists still draw on this equation, although they usually use the version MV = Py, where y stands for real income.
The equation can be a very powerful tool for checking the consistency of one's thinking about the economy. Indeed, Reagan economist Beryl Sprinkel, who was Treasury undersecretary for monetary affairs in 1981, used this equation to criticize his colleague David Stockman's economic forecasts. Sprinkel pointed out that the only way Stockman's assumptions about the growth of income, the inflation rate, and the growth of the money supply could prove true would be if velocity increased faster than it ever had before. As it turned out, velocity actually declined.
Irving Fisher was born in upstate New York in 1867. He gained an eclectic education at Yale, studying science and philosophy. He published poetry and works on astronomy, mechanics, and geometry. But his greatest concentration was on mathematics and economics, the latter having no academic department at Yale. Nonetheless, Fisher earned the first Ph.D. in economics ever awarded by Yale. Upon graduation he stayed at Yale for the rest of his career.
A three-year struggle with tuberculosis beginning in 1898 left Fisher with a profound interest in health and hygiene. He took up vegetarianism and exercise and wrote a national best-seller titled How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science, whose value he demonstrated by living until age eighty. He campaigned for Prohibition, peace, and eugenics. He was founder or president of numerous associations and agencies, including the Econometric Society and the American Economic Association. He was also a successful inventor. In 1925 his firm, which held the patent on his "visible card index" system, merged with its main competitor to form what later was known as Remington Rand and then Sperry Rand. Although the merger made him very wealthy, he lost a large part of his wealth in the stock market crash of 1929.
Selected Works
The Nature of Capital and Income. 1906.
The Purchasing Power of Money. 1911.
The Purchasing Power of Money, new and revised edition, 1922.
The Rate of Interest. 1907.
The Theory of Interest. 1930.
"Dollar Stabilization." Encyclopedia Britannica. vol. XXX, pp. 852-853. 1921.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Fisher.html
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/fisher/index.html
|
| |
|
|
|
|
