Capital and Interest

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, the great economist and finance minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is a pillar of the Austrian School. As the champion of the then-emerging marginalist school, this great work brought him more fame than even Carl Menger had in his day.

Here is the original English translation, by Scottish economist William Smart, of Capital and Interest. This translation had a large impact on the American and British economic scene, and its treatment of the text retains its clarity and insight more than a century after its initial publication. This edition is the first that has been available in many years.

With depth and lucidity, Böhm-Bawerk surveys and critiques failed theories of interest from antiquity to modern times, presents a full theory of the structure of production, and defends the importance of capital in production and time in the determination of the interest rate.

The broad implications of this work are being rediscovered today by younger Austrians who are building on his foundation for Austrian production theory. Capital and Interest does not only address economics, however. As Mises said, this voluminous treatise is the royal road to understanding of the fundamental political issues of our age.