ABSTRACT
William Stanley Jevons is the forerunner of neo-classical economics. Jevons considered his theory to be revolutionary; he gave an impetus to and enthusiastic statement of the utility theory of value and his mathematical mode of exposition was calculated to emphasize his apparent opposition to classical theory. Jevons developed his major contribution to the theory of capital almost completely at the same time that he formulated his theory of subjective value. In the section on "Distribution of Labour", Jevons attempts to ascertain how an individual would allocate his labor between two kinds of commodities. Jevons contributes virtually nothing to the development of rent theory except fairly concise symbolic and geometrical methods of restating the classical theory. It is in the determination of the rate of interest on capital that Jevons' distribution theory makes its only significant contribution to the development of the marginal productivity theory.
