Cassel, Gustav

Cassel, Gustav

(go͝os`täf kä`səl), 1866–1945, Swedish economist and authority on international monetary problems. He was a delegate to many world economic conferences and wrote valuable papers on foreign exchange. He developed the theory of purchasing power parity, which postulates that low interest rates would probably encourage people to spend savings rather than live off the interest that their savings would generate. Among his books are Nature and Necessity of Interest (1903), Money and Foreign Exchange after 1914 (1922), Fundamental Thoughts on Economics (1925), and On Quantitative Thinking in Economics (1935).

Cassel, Gustav

 

Born Oct. 20, 1866; died Jan. 15, 1945. Swedish economist, belonging to the mathematical school of bourgeois political economy.

Cassel received a mathematics degree at the University of Uppsala in 1895 and was a professor of political economy and finance at the University of Stockholm from 1904 to 1933. Cas-sel’s views were eclectic. In opposition to the labor theory of value, Cassel proposed a distorted and oversimplified conception of price based on the principle of scarcity of utilities, interpreting money circulation, wages, and economic crises in the light of this conception.

WORKS

Theoretische Sozialökonomie. Leipzig, 1918.
The Theory of Social Economy. London, 1932.
On Quantitative Thinking in Economics. Oxford, 1935.
In Russian translation:
Mirovaia denezhnaia problema. Moscow, 1922.
Osnovnye idei teoreticheskoi ekonomii. Moscow, 1929.