On Wed, 31 May 1995, William M. Wiecek wrote: 
>  
> Approximately when did the concept of discounting future  
>income streams to arrive at present value become a  
>commonplace among economists?   
 
If you want to go right back, the idea of valuing land by  
its expected returns was understood, albeit rather roughly,  
by the seventeenth century, Turgot (1766) certainly  
understood the equalization of returns from the purchase of  
different assets, and John Rae (1834) had a very clear idea  
of the way changes in expected returns (in his case, caused  
by technical change) altered the value of existing assets,  
though I don't remember how far he got with the formal math  
of discounting. It is implicit, though. 
 
  Tony Brewer, Economics, Bristol 
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