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{{Short description|American economist (1863–1949)}}
{{Blacklisted-links|1=
* http://www.econlib.org/library/NPDBooks/Fetter/ftCIR.html
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{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2015}}
{{Infobox economist
| school_tradition = [[Austrian School]]
| color =
| image = File:Fetter.jpg
| image_size = 164px
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| birth_place = [[Peru, Indiana]], U.S.
| death_date = {{death date and age|1949|3|21|1863|3|8|mf=yes}}
| death_place = [[Princeton, New Jersey]], U.S.<ref>
| field = [[Economics]], [[history]], [[political economy]], [[distribution (economics)|distribution theory]], [[Imputation (economics)|imputation]]
| influences = [[Carl Menger|Menger]]
| contributions =
| signature = Frank fetter-sig.jpg
}}
'''Frank Albert Fetter''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|f|ɛ|t|ər|}}; March 8, 1863 – March 21, 1949) was an
Fetter notably debated [[Alfred Marshall]], presenting a theoretical reassessment of land as capital. Fetter's arguments have been credited with prompting mainstream economists to abandon the [[Henry George|Georgist]] idea "that land is a unique factor of production and hence that there is any special need for a special theory of ground rent...."<ref name="Blaug" /> A proponent of the [[subjective theory of value]], Fetter emphasized the importance of [[time preference]] and rebuffed [[Irving Fisher]] for abandoning the pure time preference theory of interest that Fisher had earlier espoused in his 1907 book, ''The Rate of Interest''.<ref name="Rothbard" />
==Early life and education==
Frank Fetter was born in [[Peru, Indiana]] to a [[Quaker]] family during the height of the [[American Civil War]].<ref name="Brown">Brown, J. Douglas. [http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/fetter_frank_albert.html "Fetter, Frank A."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304050726/http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/fetter_frank_albert.html |date=March 4, 2016 }} ''A Princeton Companion.'' (Alexander Leitch, ed.). Princeton University Press, 1978.</ref> Fetter proved an able student as a youth, as demonstrated by his acceptance to [[Indiana University]] in 1879 when he was only sixteen years old. At Indiana, he joined the [[Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity]].<ref>"Beta Chapter of Indiana." ''Grand catalogue of the Phi kappa psi fraternity, 1922''. Hilburn & West. [https://books.google.com/books?id=00tNAAAAYAAJ
After eight years, Fetter returned to academia and finally completed his [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] in 1891. In 1892, [[Jeremiah Jenks|Jeremiah W. Jenks]]—who had taught Fetter at Indiana University—acquired a teaching position at [[Cornell University]] at the new [[President White School of History and Political Science]] and subsequently secured a fellowship for Fetter at that institution. Fetter completed his [[Master of Philosophy]] degree the same year. Jenks then convinced Fetter to study, as Jenks himself had, under [[Johannes Conrad]] at the [[University of Paris|Sorbonne]] in [[Paris, France]]. Fetter earned his [[Ph.D.]] in 1894 from the [[University of Halle]] in Germany, where he wrote his [[doctoral dissertation]], a critique of [[Thomas Robert Malthus#An Essay on the Principle of Population|Malthusian population theory]].<ref name="Herbener" />
==Professional life==
[[File:Frank fetter-young.
After earning his doctoral degree, Fetter accepted an instructorship at Cornell, but quickly left after being offered a position as a professor at Indiana University. In 1898, [[Stanford University]] lured him away from Indiana, but Fetter resigned from Stanford three years later over a dispute regarding [[academic freedom]]. After leaving Stanford in 1901, Fetter went back to Cornell, where he remained for ten years.<ref name="Brown" /> In 1911, he again found himself in professional transition, accepting the position of chairman in an interdisciplinary department at [[Princeton University]] which incorporated [[history]], [[politics]], and economics.<ref name="Herbener" /> Fetter was the first chairman of Princeton University's Department of Economics and Social institutions.<ref name="Brown" />
Despite his ideological proximity and personal rapport with eminent Austrian School economists such as [[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk]] and [[Friedrich von Wieser]], as well as his favorable reviews of works by [[Ludwig von Mises]] and [[F.A. Hayek]], Fetter referred to himself, [[Thorstein Veblen]], and [[Herbert J. Davenport]] more specifically as being members of the "American Psychological School."<ref name="Newschool">[http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/fetter.htm "Frank A. Fetter, 1863–1949."] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060715152111/http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/fetter.htm |date=July 15, 2006 }} [[The New School]].</ref> The appellation "Psychological School" is now generally considered to be synonymous with "[[Austrian School]]."<ref>Israel M. Kirzner (1987). "Austrian School of Economics," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 1, pp.
Fetter was a staunch opponent of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]'s plan to end the [[gold standard]] and worked with other economists in lobbying against the move to a [[fiat currency]]. As some indication of Fetter's role in these efforts,
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==Theoretical contributions in economics==
===Land as capital===▼
[[File:Marshall.gif|thumb|right|100px|Alfred Marshall (1842–1924)]]
▲===Land as capital===
Fetter participated in a notable debate with [[England|English]] economist [[Alfred Marshall]], both through his 1904 ''Principles of Economics'' and a number of journal articles in the [[American Economic Association]]'s journals and in the ''[[Quarterly Journal of Economics]]''. He contested Marshall's position that land is theoretically distinct from capital.<ref>[http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-97188176.html "Land as a factor of production."] ''The American Journal of Economics and Sociology''. December 1, 2002.</ref> Fetter argued that such a distinction was impractical, stating that,
<blockquote>The notion that it is a simple matter to distinguish between the yield of natural agents and that of improvements is fanciful and confusing.... The objective classification of land and capital as natural and artificial agents is a task that always must transcend the human power of discrimination.<ref>Fetter, Frank. [http://www.econlib.org/library/NPDBooks/Fetter/ftCIR.html ''Capital, Interest, and Rent'']. Murray N. Rothbard, Ed. Kansas City: Sheed, Andrews, and McMeel, Inc. 1977.
[[File:Henry George.jpg|thumb|100px|right|Henry George (1839–1897)]]
Fetter's stand on this issue further led him to oppose [[Georgism|Georgist]] ideas like the [[land value tax]]. [[Mark Blaug]], a specialist in the history of economic thought, credits Fetter and [[John Bates Clark]] with influencing mainstream economists to abandon the idea "that land is a unique factor of production and hence that there is any special need for a special theory of ground rent.... This is in fact the basis of all the attacks on Henry George by contemporary economists and certainly the fundamental reason why professional economists increasingly ignored him."<ref name="Blaug">Blaug, Mark. Interview in Andelson, Robert V. [https://books.google.com/books?id=-fdaZGXDF4cC
===Applications of subjective value theory===
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In "Interest Theories, Old and New" (1914), Fetter criticized [[Irving Fisher]] for abandoning the pure time preference theory of interest that Fisher had earlier espoused in his 1907 book, ''The Rate of Interest'', a tome which had heavily influenced Fetter. As [[Murray Rothbard]] recounts, upon further review of Fisher's earlier work,
<blockquote>...Fetter discovered that the seeds of error were in Fisher's publication of 1907. Fisher had stated that valuations of present and future goods imply a preexisting money rate of interest, thereby suggesting that a pure time-preference explanation of interest involves circular reasoning. By way of contrast, and in the course of explaining his own pure time-preference, or "capitalization," theory of interest, Fetter showed that time valuation is prerequisite to the determination of the market rate of interest.<ref name="Rothbard">Rothbard, Murray N. [https://www.mises.org/story/1965 "Fetter the Radical." Introduction to ''Capital, Interest, and Rent'']. Institute for Humane Studies. Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1977.</ref></blockquote>
<!-- ===Monopoly price theory===<ref>[[Joseph Salerno|Salerno, Joseph T.]] [https://www.mises.org/etexts/theoryofmonopolyprice.pdf "The Development of the Theory of Monopoly Price: From Carl Menger to Vernon Mund."] Prepared for presentation at Southern Economic Association Conference▼
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November 21–23, San Antonio, Texas. September 2003. ''Mises.org''.</ref> -->
==Reception in academia==
In 1909, at the age of forty-six, Fetter was awarded an honorary [[LL.D.]] from [[Colgate University]],<ref name="Brown" /> and he was made president of the American Economic Association in 1913.<ref>
Fetter's treatise, ''Principles of Economics'' (1904), has been described by Herbener as "unsurpassed until [[Ludwig von Mises]]'s treatise of 1940, ''Nationaloekonomie''."<ref name="Herbener" /> In Rothbard's preface to the 1977 edition of Fetter's ''Capital, Interest, and Rent'', he notes that he was first introduced to Fetter's work via a citation in Mises' ''[[Human Action]]'' and describes Fetter's views on interest and rent as being "Austrian" and influential on his own views.
<blockquote>...while reading Fetter's oeuvre in the course of writing my ''[[Man, Economy, and State]]''... I was struck by the brilliance and consistency of his integrated theory of distribution and by the neglect of Fetter in current histories of economic thought, even by those that are Austrian oriented. For Fetter's systematic theory, while challenging and original (particularly his theories of interest and rent), was emphatically in the Austrian school tradition.<ref name="Rothbard" /> </blockquote>
Upon Fetter's death in 1949, J. Douglas Brown, who would later be named Provost of Princeton University, wrote a "Memorial" to Fetter for the ''[[American Economic Review]]''. He opened the tribute with the announcement that "with the death of Frank Albert Fetter the great company of American economists has suffered an irreparable loss."<ref>{{cite journal |last= Brown
==Books==
* ''Versuch einer
* ''[https://mises.org/etexts/fetter.asp The Principles of Economics]''. [https://mises.org/etexts/fetter.pdf The Principles of Economics, With Applications to Practical Problems] New York: The Century Co., 1905
* ''[http://chestofbooks.com/finance/economics/Source-Book-In-Economics/ Source Book in Economics]''. New York: The Century
* ''[http://chestofbooks.com/finance/economics/Economics1-Economic-Principles/ Economics, Volume 1: Economic Principles]''. [https://mises.org/books/principles-fetter.pdf Economic Principles] New York: The Century Co., 1915.
* ''Manual of References and Exercises in Economics for Use with, Vol. 1: Economic Principles''. New York: The Century Co., 1916.
* ''[http://chestofbooks.com/finance/economics/Economics2-Modern-Economic-Problems/ Economics, Vol. 2: Modern Economic Problems]''. [https://mises.org/Books/moderneconomicprob.pdf Modern Economic Problems] New York: The Century Co., 1916. Revised 2nd edition, 1922.
* ''Manual of References and Exercises in Economics for Use with, Vol. 2: Modern Economics''. New York: The Century Co., 1917.
* ''Masquerade of Monopoly''. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1931.
* ''[http://www.econlib.org/library/NPDBooks/Fetter/ftCIR.html Capital, Interest and Rent: Essays in the theory of distribution]''. [https://mises.org/books/capital-fetter.pdf Capital, Interest, and Rent: Essays in the Theory of Distribution] [[Institute for Humane Studies]]. Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1977.
==Articles==
* "[http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/fetter/capital.htm Recent Discussion of the Capital Concept] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120205194313/http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/fetter/capital.htm |date=February 5, 2012 }}" by Frank A. Fetter, ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', (1900)
==References==
{{
==External links==
{{
* {{Gutenberg author |id=
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Frank Albert Fetter}}
* {{Librivox author |id=6000}}
* [https://mises.org/literature.aspx?action=author&Id=117 Works by Frank Fetter] at the [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]].
* [http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/fetter.html Information] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100529000541/http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/fetter.html |date=May 29, 2010 }} on Fetter's papers housed at Indiana University.
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