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• Econlib Editor's Notes
• Preface
• Chapter I: Issues That Depend On Distribution
• Chapter II: The Place of Distribution Within the Traditional Divisions of Economics
• Chapter III: The Place of Distribution Within the Natural Divisions of Economics
• Chapter IV: The Basis of Distribution In Universal Economic Laws
• Chapter V: Actual Distribution the Result of Social Organization
• Chapter VI: Effects of Social Progress
• Chapter VII: Wages In a Static State the Specific Product of Labor
• Chapter VIII: How the Specific Product of Labor May Be Distinguished
• Chapter IX: Capital and Capital-goods Contrasted
• Chapter X: Kinds of Capital and of Capital-goods
• Chapter XI: The Productivity of Social Labor Dependent On Its Quantitative Relation to Capital
• Chapter XII: Final Productivity the Regulator of Both Wages and Interest17
• Chapter XIII: The Products of Labor and Capital, As Measured By the Formula of Rent
• Chapter XIV: The Earnings of Industrial Groups
• Chapter XV: The Marginal Efficiency of Consumers' Wealth the Basis of Group Distribution
• Chapter XVI: How the Marginal Efficiency of Consumers' Wealth Is Measured
• Chapter XVII: How the Efficiency of Final Increments of Producers' Wealth Is Tested
• Chapter XVIII: The Growth of Capital By Qualitative Increments
• Chapter XIX: The Mode of Apportioning Labor and Capital Among the Industrial Groups
• Chapter XX: Production and Consumption Synchronized By Rightly Apportioned Capital
• Chapter XXI: The Theory of Economic Causation
• Chapter XXII: The Law of Economic Causation Applied to the Products of Concrete Instruments
• Chapter XXIII: The Relation of All Rents to Value and Thus to Group Distribution
• Chapter XXIV: The Unit For Measuring Industrial Agents and Their Products
• Chapter XXV: Static Standards In a Dynamic Society
• Chapter XXVI: Proximate Static Standards

Econlib Editor's Notes

This 1908 edition is the third reprinting of Clark's path-breaking, yet widely under-read, 1899 textbook, in which he developed marginal productivity theory and used it to explore the way income is distributed between wages, interest, and rents in a market economy. In this book Clark made the theory of marginal productivity clear enough that we take it for granted today. Yet, even today, the power of his methodical development of what seems obvious at first glance clarifies and demolishes inaccurate theories that linger on. His work remains illuminating because of its classic explanations of the mobility of capital via its recreation while it wears out, the difference between static and dynamic models, the equivalence of rent and interest, the inability of entrepreneurs to "exploit" (meaning, underpay) labor (or capital) in a competitive market economy, the flaws of widely-quoted existing theories such as the labor theory of value and the irrelevance of rent on land, and, in a famous footnote, why von Thünen's concept of final productivity didn't go far enough.

The work is reproduced here in full with the exception of Clark's textbook-style marginal notes and his "chapter overviews" in the Table of Contents.