"PRICES ARE SIGNALS, NOT MARCHING ORDERS"

HAYEK, Friedrich A. Profits, Interest and Investment and Other Essays on the Theory of Industrial Fluctuations. London: George Routledge and Sons, (1939). Octavo, original red cloth. $850.

First edition of a collection of eight essays by Hayek together for the first time, featuring the first appearance in print of the title essay, in original cloth.

Hayek wrote the eight essays comprising this work over the course of ten years. The first and foremost of these lends its title to the book and is intended to be "a revised version of the central argument" of his important and controversial Prices and Production. The volume also includes: "Investment that Raises the Demand for Capital," "The Maintenance of Capital," "Price Expectations, Money Disturbances and Malinvestments," "Saving," "The Present State… of the Study of Industrial Fluctuations," and "A Note on the Development of the Doctrine of 'Forced Saving." In Profits, Interest and Investment, "Hayek recognized that expectations in the rate of interest and entrepreneurial interpretations of intertemporal price movements can have an important effect on the course of the trade cycle. That is, prices are signals, not marching orders" (New Palgrave II:612-613). With Appendix: "The 'Paradox' of Saving." Without scarce dust jacket.

Text with light scattered foxing mainly to preliminaries and edges, tiny bit of soiling to cloth. A near-fine copy.