FISHER, IRVING. – American economist, born at Sawgertes (New York) on 27 February 1867, died in New York on 29 April 1947. Professor of mathematics at Yale, in 1895 he became assistant professor of political economy and in 1898 full professor. He served on and directed numerous American commissions concerned with problems of public hygiene, protectionism, prohibition, and labor. As an economist, F. was a convinced supporter of the theory of price stabilization, and in order to achieve this goal he believed that the value of the monetary unit should be made to correspond to a determined quantity not of metal, but of commodities. Of his numerous works, L'illusione monetaria (Milan 1930) has been translated into Italian.
BIBL.: M. Allais, La vie et l'oeuvre de l. F., in Revue d'économie politique, May–June 1947; G. J. Shirras, in The Economic Journal, Sept. 1947. Celestino Melzi