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 [log in to unmask]