Frank Fetter
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Frank Albert Fetter (8 March 1863–1949) was an American economist of the Austrian School.
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[edit] Early life and education
Frank Fetter was born in Peru, Indiana to a Quaker family during the height of the American Civil War.[1] Fetter proved an able student as a youth, as demonstrated by his acceptance to Indiana University in 1879 when he was only sixteen years old. Fetter was on track to graduate with the class of 1883, but left college to run his family's bookstore upon news of his father's declining health. This proved to be an opportunity for the young man to acquaint himself with some of the economic ideas that would later prove formative. Chief among the intellectual influences Fetter encountered at this time was Henry George's Progress and Poverty (1879).[2]
After eight years, Fetter returned to academia and finally completed his B.A. in 1891. In 1892, Jeremiah W. Jenks—who had taught Fetter at Indiana University—acquired a teaching position at Cornell University and subsequently secured a fellowship for Fetter at that institution. Fetter completed his Master of Philosophy degree the same year. Jenks then convinced Fetter to study, as Jenks himself had, under Johannes Conrad at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. Fetter finally earned his Ph.D. in 1894 from the University of Halle in Heildeberg, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the subject of population theory.[2]
[edit] Professional life
After earning his doctoral degree, Fetter accepted an instructorship at Cornell, but quickly left after being offered a position as a professor at Indiana University. In 1898, Stanford University lured him away from Indiana, but Fetter resigned from Stanford three years later over a dispute regarding academic freedom. After leaving Stanford in 1901, Fetter went back to Cornell, where he remained for ten years.[1] In 1911, he again found himself in professional transition, accepting the position of chairman in an interdisciplinary department at Princeton University which incorporated history, politics, and economics.[2] Fetter was the first chairman of Princeton University's Department of Economics and Social institutions.[1]
Despite his ideological proximity and personal rapport with eminent Austrian School economists such as Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser, as well as his favorable reviews of works by Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek, Fetter referred to himself, Thorstein Veblen, and Herbert J. Davenport as being members of the "American Psychological School."[3]
[edit] Reception by other scholars
At the age of forty-six, Fetter was awarded an honorary LL.D. from Colgate University. Fetter was elevated to the position of president of the American Economic Association by the time he was fifty years old, a fact that offers some indication of his degree of influence. He was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1927, he was awarded the Karl Menger Medal by the Austrian Economic Society.[1]
The treatise penned by Fetter, Principles of Economics (1904), has been described by Austrian School economist Jeffrey Herbener as "unsurpassed until Ludwig von Mises's treatise of 1940, Nationaloekonomie."[2]
[edit] Books
- Versuch einer Bevolkerungslehre ausgehen von einer Kritic des Malthus'schen Bevolkerungsprincips (1894)
- The Principles of Economics (1904)
- Source Book in Economics (1912)
- Economics, Volume 1: Economic Principles (1915)
- Manual of References and Exercices in Economics for Use with, Vol. 1: Economic Principles (1916)
- Economics, Vol. 2: Modern Economic Problems (1916; revised 2nd edition, 1922)
- Manual of References and Exercices in Economics for Use with, Vol. 2: Modern Economics (1917)
- Masquerade of Monopoly (1931)
- Capital, Interest and Rent: Essays in the theory of distribution (1977)
