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[NOTE: Responding to Mike Lynch's posting.]
Actually it was Friedrich Hermann who first drew the suppy-demand
diagram with price on the vertical axis in 1841. Rau and Roscher
copied him in later editions of their works. Rau first did opportunity
cost and also had the idea of marginal utility.
Streissler somewhat downgrades von Thunen, or more precisely argues
that he gets too much credit. He was very early on certain cases of
diminishing returns, but much of what he gets credited with was
previously available in German in Rau's work.
Von Thunen has received more recognition in English because his
work was translated earlier. It has been especially influential in spatial
and regional economics where his work was indeed profoundly
seminal.
Barkley Rosser
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