New Light on Knut Wicksell

With the publication of these two books, the presentation of Knut Wicksell to the English-speaking public is virtually complete. Before the war we had the Lectures and Interest and Prices, each containing also important supplementary articles. Since then we have had Value, Capital and Rent, and the inclusion in the International Economic Association’s Classics in the Theory of Public Finance of Wicksell’s central contribution to the theory of public finance. Now Professor Lindahl has gathered together the most important and hitherto untranslated papers on economic theory and Professor Gårdlund has written what must obviously be regarded as the definitive life. It is to be regretted that more of the Finanzwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen is not available. (There is a tiny fragment devoted to the taxation of monopoly in the American Economic Association’s Readings in the Theory of Taxation.) And some of us would very much like to have an opportunity of more detailed study of Wicksell’s views on population theory which played so large a part in shaping his general social philosophy and his public activities. But for the history of economic analysis, what we have is certainly enough to establish him as one of the main figures in the formative period of modern economics. And Professor Gårdlund’s Life extends the perspective by exhibiting him further in a role much less suspected in non-Scandinavian circles, that of an important social and moral reformer.