Über die Natur und das Wesen des Geldes – J. H. von Thünens unveröffentlichtes Manuskript zur Geldtheorie

The economic works of Johann Heinrich von Thuenen include 1,000 unpublished pages of drafts and notes on the basis of which he prepared the second volume of his famous “Isolated State in Relation to Agriculture and Political Economy”. It’s bulk was not made accessible until today. The analysis of a 60 pages’ manuscript treating monetary questions and preparing his theory of capital and interest shows that the economic thoughts of Thuenen are much more far-reaching than presented in his published works. Diminishing returns of cash keeping in enterprises are the basic concept of his monetary analysis. Main results are an algebraic equation of exchange, the interaction between the monetary interest rate and the rate of return on real capital and finally a synthesis of an extended quantity theory and the production cost theory of money. “The Nature and Essence of Money” includes important elements of the development in monetary economics in the late nineteenth and the beginning twentieth century mainly influenced by contributions of Irving Fisher, Knut Wicksell and John Maynard Keynes.