ON INTEREST AND PROFIT: THOMAS TOOKE'S MAJOR LEGACY TO ECONOMICS

This paper argues that Thomas Tooke's (1773--1858) most important legacy to economics is not his conception of "endogenous money", however important, but is instead his original proposition that the long-run "average" rate of interest entered into the normal cost of production and, therefore, the normal prices of commodities, reflecting the notion that the interest rate systematically governs the normal rate of profit. The paper shows that this conception of an "autonomous" rate of interest advanced by Tooke contributes to overcoming the long-run neutrality of monetary forces which has traditionally characterized economic theory within the framework of "modern" classical analysis. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.