Foundations of Economic Analysis - First Edition - Signed - Paul Anthony Samuelson - Bauman Rare Books

Foundations of Economic Analysis

Paul Anthony SAMUELSON

Item#: 81575 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Foundations of Economic Analysis

Foundations of Economic Analysis

“THE MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY ECONOMICS”: SAMUELSON’S FOUNDATIONS IN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS, FIRST EDITION, SIGNED BY HIM

SAMUELSON, Paul Anthony. Foundations of Economic Analysis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947. Octavo, original burgundy cloth. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of Nobel Prize-winner Samuelson’s first book, signed on the title page: “Paul A. Samuelson.”

Based on Samuelson’s 1941 doctoral dissertation at Harvard, Foundations in Economic Analysis is one of the most influential economic texts of the 20th century. “More than anyone else he bears responsibility for the mathematical bent of economics in the late 20th century… His doctoral dissertation is regarded by most economists as providing the mathematical foundations for contemporary economics… In all his professional work, Samuelson sought to provide mathematical underpinnings for economic ideas, believing that economic theory without formalizations was unsystematic and unclear” (Pressman, Fifty Major Economists, 162-63). The title of this work “was meant to be exactly as ambitious as it sounds, and the book’s impact on the profession has largely justified it… For the first time in a book in English on economic principles, the mathematics, instead of being relegated to an appendix, provided the skeleton of the argument… Fifty years after it was written, the Foundations (together with Hicks’ Value and Capital) is still one of the most inspiring classics of general equilibrium economics (Niehans, History of Economic Theory, 423). Awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970, Samuelson remains “one of the two or three best-known and most respected economists during the last half of the 20th century” (Pressman, 166). Without scarce original dust jacket.

Only slight soiling to cloth and mild toning to spine. A near-fine signed copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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Wood-Engraving Engraving made with the graver or burin on the cross-section of a piece of boxwood; the harder wood and finer tools allow for more delicate, finely detailed images, while the block can still be set in the page alongside text and printed on the same stock as the text. While much older, wood engravings enjoyed an important renaissance in the late eighteenth century through Thomas Bewick and continued in popularity thorugh the nineteenth century.
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