Prices and Production

the scarce first edition preceding the German language version

The scarce first publication of Hayek's four lectures on monetary theory given at the London School of Economics in January 1931.

Prices and Production is Hayek's second book, with this, the English text preceding the German-language edition which was published in Vienna later the same year (Preise und Produktion).

Hayek had been invited to the LSE by the Professor of Economics, Lionel Robbins (1898-1984), who was impressed with the work of the Vienna school on the business cycle which he felt could help explain periodic disequilibrium in the market economy. The same year Hayek was appointed visiting professor at the LSE, and in 1932 he was appointed Tooke Professor of Economic Science and Statistics, a post he held until 1950.

'Hayek's insistence that, while inflation is a monetary phenomenon, there is no such thing as "the quantity of money", and no sharp boundary between money and other financial assets, has stood the test of time. The experience of the British governments in the 1980s, which changed their monetary targets so much and to so little avail, was much less puzzling to a Hayekian than to a true monetarist believer. So, too, was the high unemployment cost of reducing inflation, which Hayek insisted was inevitable while labour markets were dominated by the collective bargaining mentality' (ODNB).

First edition; 8vo (19 x 13 cm); in-text diagrams, ownership inscription in pen to front free endpaper recto, occasional underlining in pencil, offsetting to endpapers; publisher's blue cloth, spine lettered n gold, spine slightly faded, corners a little bumped, very good; xv, [1], 112, [14]pp.