Knut Wicksell, 1851–1926: Interest and Prices

Abstract

Wicksell was born on 20 December 1851 in Stockholm, the youngest of six children. His parents died while he was still young but left sufficient funds to secure him a good education. He attended the University of Uppsala from 1869 to 1873 to study mathematics, physics and astronomy and in 1875 made himself eligible for doctoral studies in mathematics. By the early 1880s, he switched to the social sciences, spurred by a growing concern over social issues about population and drunkeness; earning his living from journalism and public lectures. In 1885–86 he visited London, to study economics, and became actively involved in the neo-Malthusian movement. The Lorèn Foundation in 1886 provided a grant to study economics in Germany and assisted with the publication of his early books: Value, Capital and Rent (1893), Studies in the Theory of Public Finance (1896) and Interest and Prices (1898). In 1901, he was appointed first as associate professor, and in 1904 as full professor, at the University of Lund. At this time, he prepared his Lectures on Political Economy for publication. These elaborated and improved on his earlier work on capital, production and distribution theory (vol. 1, published in 1901) and on monetary theory (vol. 2, published in 1906). His academic career was highly productive and controversial. Many articles, pamphlets and tracts on population, socialism, money, banking, taxation and international trade flowed from his pen. In 1910 he was sent to jail for blasphemy. The many fine students (among whom Sommarin, Lindahl, Ohlin, the Akerman brothers) he attracted, formed the influential Swedish school of the 1930s. He died suddenly in 1926, before the international acclaim his work obtained in the 1930s through Keynes and the English translation of some of his major books, the Lectures and Interest and Prices.