Capital and Its Structure in PDF
26 January 2007 at 4:19 pm Peter G. Klein 3 comments
| Peter Klein |
Ludwig Lachmann, a colleague of F. A. Hayek at the LSE in the 1930s and later professor of economics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, made major contributions to the Austrian theory of capital. His most important book, Capital and Its Structure (1956), is now available on the web as a PDF file (courtesy of the Mises Institute, which continues to add to its impressive online book collection).
Entry filed under: - Klein -, Austrian Economics, Recommended Reading.
Organizations and Markets 
1.
Joe Mahoney | 28 January 2007 at 12:02 pm
Thank you for this book pdf.
A fundamental premise of the Strategic Management field is the heterogeneity of the firm. However, to date, there is no systematic formal body of knowledge that analytically unpacks the concept of “heterogeneity” into essential components.
When this paper is written, I anticipate that Lachmann’s concept of the “heteogeneity of capital in use” will play a central role. Lachmann’s work also may be connected to Penrose’s resource-based approach, which emphasized heterogeneity in the SERVICES of resources and the entrepreneurial imagination to come up with new services of resources.
2.
TDL | 29 January 2007 at 11:41 pm
As a non-economist (or amateur, but not very good, economist) I am curious to know if the study of capital has been advanced since this writing? I don’t know if this topic is germane to your blog, but what is the body of knowledge on capital?
Regards,
TDL
P.S. Very interesting blog, I have been reading it for some time now.
3.
Peter Klein | 30 January 2007 at 12:27 am
Thanks, glad you’re enjoying things. Peter Lewin’s book Capital in Disequilibrium (Routledge, 1999) develops and extends many of the themes in Lachmann’s earlier book. (Peter was a student of Lachmann’s, incidentally.) You can read an excerpt here.
If you’ll forgive the self-promotion, The Foss-Foss-Klein-Klein paper “The Economic Organization of Heterogeneous Capital” might be of interest.
Finally, Roger Garrison has several papers on recent developments in (Lachmanian) capital theory here and here.