ABSTRACT
The fundamental importance of Rae’s work for formal economic theory is beyond question. Both Bohm-Bawerk and Irving Fisher conceded that the substance of their principal insights into capital theory were first expounded by Rae. J. S. Mill’s infant industry argument for protection was a weak paraphrase of sections of Rae’s New Principles. Thorstein Veblen drew the concept and the term ‘conspicuous consumption’, and probably his concept of the dichotomy between the engineer and the price system from Rae; but, all of this has been better stated in R. Warren James’s, John Rae Political Economist: an Account of His Life and a Compilation of His Main Writings.2 The present work has its own purposes, and does not repeat or replace James’s work in this regard.
