Foundations of economic analysis

THE ORIGINAL version of this book submitted to the David A. Wells Prize Committee of Harvard University 1941 carried the subtitle, "The Operational Significance of Economic Theory." At that time most of the material presented was already several years old, having been conceived and written primarily in 1937. Further delay in publication has been necessary because of the war, and because of the addition of supplementary treatise-like material going beyond the original conception of the work as indicated by its subtitle.

Because of the pressure of war work I have not been able to do full justice to the literature of the last few years, nor even to include all of the developments of my own thinking. Fortunately, the passage of time has dealt kindly with the analysis contained here, and where it abuts upon the topics treated in Professor Hicks's masterly Value and Capital, the similarity in point of view has been reassuring.

My greatest debt is to Marion Crawford Samuelson whose con tributions have been all too many. The result has been a vast mathematical, economic, and stylistic improvement. Without her collaboration the book would literally not have been written, and no perfunctory uxorial acknowledgment can do justice to her aid. Nor can the quaint modern custom of excluding the value of a wife's services from the national income condone her exclusion from the title page.