----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- With respect to the index number theory side of the project: Edgeworth identifies Bishop Fleetwood's 1707 Chronicon Preciosum, as "the earliest treatise on index-numbers and one of the best". In the Making and Use of Index Numbers, Irving Fisher cites other occasional uses in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Interest in index numbers expanded dramatically in the later nineteenth century with the beginning of publication of some of the most important early index numbers, e.g., the Economist series in 1869, Sauerbeck's series in 1886, and Soetbeer's series in 1886 . Fisher says that Jevons "seems to have been the first to have kindled in others an interest in the subject and may perhaps be considered the father of index numbers". Jevons's (Investigations into Currency and Finance) approach was developed by Edgeworth. Taking another approach, Fisher devised a set of desirable properties for the function that expresses the price level change from one situation to another and tests to see which methods of calculating index numbers possess these desirable properties. The approach to index number theory that is currently dominant, based on comparisons of welfare, was introduced by Konus in 1924 (English translation, 1939), and developed in the 1920s and 1930s by, among others, Haberler, Keynes, Frisch, Allen and Staehle. The 1936 review article by Frisch in Econometrica is a good place to start. Among Keynes's earliest papers are several on index numbers and he continued to write interesting things on the subject through the General Theory. Diewert is a major authority on recent index number theory. Marilyn Waring's book If Women Counted has some good references on the National Income and Product Accounts. ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]