E. E. Slutsky on William Petty—A Short Introduction

E. E. Slutsky, the originator of the eponymous equation and part-inventor of the Slutsky-Yule effect, is perhaps the Soviet/Russian/Ukrainian economist most quoted by mainstream economists today, although his fame in the West rests on only two of his articles that have been translated into English. These are the 1915 article on the theory of consumer budgets, and the 1927 article on the random causes of business cycles. Many more papers remain available only in their original Russian versions, although a few were published first in other languages such as German. Presented here is a modest effort to bring more of Slutsky's work to an English-speaking audience. In a chronological bibliography of Slutsky's writings published in 1960, sandwiched between items four and six—“On the Criterion of Goodness of Fit of the Regression Lines” (1914) and “On the Theory of the Budget of the Consumer” (1915)—sits an item originally published in 1914, an “Essay on the Economic Views of William Petty.” This item is translated below.