William Deringer
Biographic Data
| ID | 1075366 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William Deringer |
| GIVEN NAMES | William |
| FAMILY NAME | Deringer |
| SIGNATURE | DERINGER W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The "Social Rate of Discount" and the Political Economy of the Future in Postwar America
Recent debates about climate change policy have illuminated the quiet power of a largely obscure economic number: the discount rate used in government cost-benefit analyses. Plugged into a vast array of administrative calculations, the discount rate shapes how governments weigh present versus future across numerous domains. How did this number acquire so much power? This article reconstructs how the social rate of discount first emerged as an obj…
Reactionary Mathematics
Mr. Aecroid’s Tables
In the 1610s and 1620s, a new computational technology took hold in England: printed mathematical tables for compound interest and discounting ("present value") problems. Historians of finance and accounting have long recognized these paper tools as predecessors of essential modern techniques like "discounted cash flow." Yet the history of these tables remains hazy. What did early seventeenth-century users do with them? Who used them? Why did the…
Introduction
Introduction:Case Studies—Finance, Education, and Law William Deringer (bio) when does a con become a con? the papers in this section interrogate this often frustrating question by examining three institutional fields—finance, education, and law—in which matters of trust (and distrust) are particularly salient. The "con" in this question can be taken in at least two ways: as a description of a person (a con artist) or an enterprise (the confidenc…
Introduction
This volume revisits the mutually constitutive relationship between science and capitalism from the seventeenth century to the present day. Adopting a global approach, we reject the notion that either science or capitalism can be understood as stages of modernity that emerged in the West and subsequently engendered a “Great Divergence” with the rest of the world. Instead, both science and capitalism were historical institutions that arose in an i…
Compound Interest Corrected
What is money in the future worth today? In the seventeenth century, questions about the “present value” of future wealth became matters of practical concern, as businesspeople and governments deployed future-oriented financial technologies like mortgages, bonds, and annuities. Those questions also attracted the attention of mathematicians. This essay examines the excursions two English mathematicians, the indefatigable mathematical gossip John C…
Introduction to the Symposium on the Contributions of Business to Economics
This essay introduces the symposium and records some reflections from symposium participants on the role of businesses in the formation of economic ideas. What are some specific challenges in researching the contributions of businesspersons to economics? Which topics or events involving the role of businesspersons in economics are most in need of scholarly analysis? What are some of the key historical trends that can be discerned in how businessp…
It Was Their Business to Know
This article explores the history of commercial epistemology during the first half of the eighteenth century in Britain. During that period, questions about the character of commerce as a field of knowledge-whether it was a simple or complex, how it related to commercial "interest," and especially who possessed it-lay at the heart of political-economic debate. This article looks specifically at one set of attitudes about commercial epistemology, …
Pricing the Future in the Seventeenth Century
Time is money. But how much? What is money in the future worth to you today? This question of "present value" arises in myriad economic activities, from valuing financial securities to real estate transactions to governmental cost-benefit analysis-even the economics of climate change. In modern capitalist practice, one calculation offers the only "rational" way to answer: compound-interest discounting. In the early modern period, though, economic…
For What It's Worth
This essay is a historical and epistemological exploration of a traditionally crazy economic event: the financial bubble. Venturing into two different moments in the history of economic thinking, it investigates financial bubbles as epistemic frontiers, where rationality has reached its limits. The first half forays into late twentieth-century economics. Since 1980, an interpretive battle over the ir/rationality of bubbles has made those peculiar…
Finding the Money
“Finding the money”—whether money lost, hidden, or needed—became a defining practical and epistemological problem in the decade after the 1688 Revolution. It was a problem that linked together actors in fiscal administration, parliamentary politics, and economic theory, and drove innovative new applications of numerical calculation to political reasoning. In the debates on monarchical revenues that arose in 1689, a crisis of knowledge engulfed Pa…
Finding the Money
“Finding the money”—whether money lost, hidden, or needed—became a defining practical and epistemological problem in the decade after the 1688 Revolution. It was a problem that linked together actors in fiscal administration, parliamentary politics, and economic theory, and drove innovative new applications of numerical calculation to political reasoning. In the debates on monarchical revenues that arose in 1689, a crisis of knowledge engulfed Pa…
Introduction
This volume revisits the mutually constitutive relationship between science and capitalism from the seventeenth century to the present day. Adopting a global approach, we reject the notion that either science or capitalism can be understood as stages of modernity that emerged in the West and subsequently engendered a “Great Divergence” with the rest of the world. Instead, both science and capitalism were historical institutions that arose in an i…
It Was Their Business to Know
This article explores the history of commercial epistemology during the first half of the eighteenth century in Britain. During that period, questions about the character of commerce as a field of knowledge-whether it was a simple or complex, how it related to commercial "interest," and especially who possessed it-lay at the heart of political-economic debate. This article looks specifically at one set of attitudes about commercial epistemology, …
For What It's Worth
This essay is a historical and epistemological exploration of a traditionally crazy economic event: the financial bubble. Venturing into two different moments in the history of economic thinking, it investigates financial bubbles as epistemic frontiers, where rationality has reached its limits. The first half forays into late twentieth-century economics. Since 1980, an interpretive battle over the ir/rationality of bubbles has made those peculiar…
Mr. Aecroid’s Tables
In the 1610s and 1620s, a new computational technology took hold in England: printed mathematical tables for compound interest and discounting ("present value") problems. Historians of finance and accounting have long recognized these paper tools as predecessors of essential modern techniques like "discounted cash flow." Yet the history of these tables remains hazy. What did early seventeenth-century users do with them? Who used them? Why did the…
Introduction to the Symposium on the Contributions of Business to Economics
This essay introduces the symposium and records some reflections from symposium participants on the role of businesses in the formation of economic ideas. What are some specific challenges in researching the contributions of businesspersons to economics? Which topics or events involving the role of businesspersons in economics are most in need of scholarly analysis? What are some of the key historical trends that can be discerned in how businessp…
Pricing the Future in the Seventeenth Century
Time is money. But how much? What is money in the future worth to you today? This question of "present value" arises in myriad economic activities, from valuing financial securities to real estate transactions to governmental cost-benefit analysis-even the economics of climate change. In modern capitalist practice, one calculation offers the only "rational" way to answer: compound-interest discounting. In the early modern period, though, economic…
Compound Interest Corrected
What is money in the future worth today? In the seventeenth century, questions about the “present value” of future wealth became matters of practical concern, as businesspeople and governments deployed future-oriented financial technologies like mortgages, bonds, and annuities. Those questions also attracted the attention of mathematicians. This essay examines the excursions two English mathematicians, the indefatigable mathematical gossip John C…
Finding the Money
“Finding the money”—whether money lost, hidden, or needed—became a defining practical and epistemological problem in the decade after the 1688 Revolution. It was a problem that linked together actors in fiscal administration, parliamentary politics, and economic theory, and drove innovative new applications of numerical calculation to political reasoning. In the debates on monarchical revenues that arose in 1689, a crisis of knowledge engulfed Pa…
For What It's Worth
This essay is a historical and epistemological exploration of a traditionally crazy economic event: the financial bubble. Venturing into two different moments in the history of economic thinking, it investigates financial bubbles as epistemic frontiers, where rationality has reached its limits. The first half forays into late twentieth-century economics. Since 1980, an interpretive battle over the ir/rationality of bubbles has made those peculiar…
Introduction to the Symposium on the Contributions of Business to Economics
This essay introduces the symposium and records some reflections from symposium participants on the role of businesses in the formation of economic ideas. What are some specific challenges in researching the contributions of businesspersons to economics? Which topics or events involving the role of businesspersons in economics are most in need of scholarly analysis? What are some of the key historical trends that can be discerned in how businessp…
It Was Their Business to Know
This article explores the history of commercial epistemology during the first half of the eighteenth century in Britain. During that period, questions about the character of commerce as a field of knowledge-whether it was a simple or complex, how it related to commercial "interest," and especially who possessed it-lay at the heart of political-economic debate. This article looks specifically at one set of attitudes about commercial epistemology, …
Pricing the Future in the Seventeenth Century
Time is money. But how much? What is money in the future worth to you today? This question of "present value" arises in myriad economic activities, from valuing financial securities to real estate transactions to governmental cost-benefit analysis-even the economics of climate change. In modern capitalist practice, one calculation offers the only "rational" way to answer: compound-interest discounting. In the early modern period, though, economic…
Introduction
Introduction:Case Studies—Finance, Education, and Law William Deringer (bio) when does a con become a con? the papers in this section interrogate this often frustrating question by examining three institutional fields—finance, education, and law—in which matters of trust (and distrust) are particularly salient. The "con" in this question can be taken in at least two ways: as a description of a person (a con artist) or an enterprise (the confidenc…
Introduction
This volume revisits the mutually constitutive relationship between science and capitalism from the seventeenth century to the present day. Adopting a global approach, we reject the notion that either science or capitalism can be understood as stages of modernity that emerged in the West and subsequently engendered a “Great Divergence” with the rest of the world. Instead, both science and capitalism were historical institutions that arose in an i…
Compound Interest Corrected
What is money in the future worth today? In the seventeenth century, questions about the “present value” of future wealth became matters of practical concern, as businesspeople and governments deployed future-oriented financial technologies like mortgages, bonds, and annuities. Those questions also attracted the attention of mathematicians. This essay examines the excursions two English mathematicians, the indefatigable mathematical gossip John C…
Mr. Aecroid’s Tables
In the 1610s and 1620s, a new computational technology took hold in England: printed mathematical tables for compound interest and discounting ("present value") problems. Historians of finance and accounting have long recognized these paper tools as predecessors of essential modern techniques like "discounted cash flow." Yet the history of these tables remains hazy. What did early seventeenth-century users do with them? Who used them? Why did the…
The "Social Rate of Discount" and the Political Economy of the Future in Postwar America
Recent debates about climate change policy have illuminated the quiet power of a largely obscure economic number: the discount rate used in government cost-benefit analyses. Plugged into a vast array of administrative calculations, the discount rate shapes how governments weigh present versus future across numerous domains. How did this number acquire so much power? This article reconstructs how the social rate of discount first emerged as an obj…
Reactionary Mathematics
Economics (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Economic Theory and Institutions (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · History (4 works) · Neoclassical economics (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works)