ABSTRACT
One notable achievement of Rothbard's is his integration of the Mises-Fetter pure time preference theory of interest with the Hayek-Wicksell structure of production analysis. Many readers of him are unaware that the original drafts of his treatise contained a production theory grounded in Marshallian partial equilibrium theory, and that only after writing extensively did Rothbard realize much of it was untenable. Rothbard developed a theory of the optimal investment decision of the producer. He pins the unfortunate monopoly-competitive price distinction on Marshallian partial equilibrium theory, writing that, "the terminology is the result of an old neoclassical preoccupation with single 'industries'. Rothbard argued that the competitive-monopoly price distinction is inappropriate for analyzing free market situations because it arbitrarily assumes the existence of a competitive and a monopoly price. The evolution of Rothbard's production theory leads from the Marshallian partial equilibrium approach to the Austrian general equilibrium approach.
