5. Capitalization and Rent
The subject of rent is one of the most confused in the entire economic literature. We must
therefore reiterate the meaning of rent as set forth earlier. We are using rent to mean
the unit price of the services of any good. It is important to banish any preconceptions
This concept of rent is based on the original contribution of Frank A. Fetter. Fetter's conception has unfortunately had little influence on economic growth.
thought, it is not only in accord with common usage, it provides a unifying principle, enabling
a coherent explanation of the price determination of unit services, and of the whole goods that
embody them. Without the rental price concept, it is difficult to distinguish between the
pricing of unit services and of whole goods. Fetter used the rental concept to apply only
to the services of durable goods, but it is clear that it can be extended to cover cases
of non-durable goods where the unit service is the whole good.
It therefore applies as well to prices of labor services, called wages, as it does to
land or to any other factor.
The rent concept applies to all goods, whether durable or non-durable.
In the case of a completely non-durable good, which vanishes fully when first used, its
unit of service is simply identical in size with the whole good itself.
In regard to a durable good, of course, the rent concept is more interesting, since the
price of the unit service is distinguishable from the price of the good as a whole.
So far in this work we have been assuming that no durable producers' goods are ever
bought outright, that only their unit services are exchanged on the market.
Therefore our entire discussion of pricing has dealt with rental pricing.
It is obvious that the rents are the fundamental prices.
The marginal utility analysis has taught us that men value goods in units and not as wholes.
The unit price, or rent, is then the fundamental price on the market.
In Chapter 4, we analyzed rental pricing and the price of the good as a whole for durable
consumers' goods.
The principle is precisely the same for producers' goods.
The rental value of the unit service is the basic one, the one ultimately determined on
the market by individual utility scales.
The price of the whole good, also known as the capital value of the good, is equal to
the sum of the expected future rents discounted by what we then vaguely called a time preference
factor and which we now know is the rate of interest.
The capital value, or price of the good as a whole then, is completely dependent on the
rental prices of the good, its physical durability and the rate of interest.
Obviously, the concept of capital value of a good has meaning only when that good is
durable and does not vanish instantly upon use.
If it did vanish, then there would only be pure rent, without separate valuations for
the good as a whole.
When we use the term good as a whole, we are not referring to the aggregate supply of the
whole good in the economy.
We are referring, for example, not to the total supply of housing of a certain type,
but to one house, which can be rented out over a period of time.
We are dealing with units of whole goods, and these units, being durable, are necessarily
larger than their constituent unit services, which can be rented out over a period of time.
The principle of the determination of capital values, that is, prices of whole goods, is
known as capitalization, or the capitalizing of rents.
This principle applies to all goods, not simply capital goods, and we must not be misled by
similarity of terminology.
Thus, capitalization applies to durable consumers' goods such as houses, TV sets, etc.
It also applies to all factors of production, including basic land.
The rental price, or rent, of a factor of production is equal, as we have seen, to its
discounted marginal value product.
The capital value of a whole factor will be equal to the sum of its future rents, or the
sum of its DMVPs.
It is often more convenient to define rent as equal to the MVP rather than the DMVP.
In that case, the capital value of the whole factor is equal to the discounted sum of its
future rents.
This capital value will be the price for which the whole good will exchange on the market.
It is at this capital value that a unit of a whole good, such as a house, a piano, a
machine, an acre of land, etc. will sell on the market.
There is clearly no sense to capitalization if there is no market, or price, for the whole
good.
The capital value is the appraised value set by the market on the basis of rents, durability,
and the interest rate.
The process of capitalization can encompass many units of a whole good, as well as one
unit.
Consider the example of Chapter 4, Section 7, and generalize from it to apply not only to houses, but to all durable producers' goods.
The good is a 10-year good.
Expected future rents are 10 gold ounces per year, determined by consumer utilities for consumers' goods, or by MVPs for producers' goods.
The rate of interest is 10% per annum.
The present capital value of this good is 59.4 gold ounces, but this whole good is itself
a unit of a larger supply, one of many houses, machines, plants, etc.
At any rate, since all units of a good have equal value, the capital value of two such
Research Houses or two such machines, etc., added together, equals precisely twice the
amount of one, or 118.8 ounces.
Since we are adding rents or DMVPs in money terms, we may keep adding them to determine
capital values of larger aggregates of durable goods.
As a matter of fact, in adding capital values, we do not need to confine ourselves to the
same good. All we need do is to add the capital values in whatever bundle of durable goods
we are interested in appraising. Thus, suppose a firm, Jones Construction Company, wishes
to sell all its assets on the market. These assets, necessarily durable, consist of the
The following. Three machines. Each machine has a capital value based on the sum of the DMVPs of 10 ounces. Therefore, total capital value is 30 ounces.
One building with a capital value of 40 ounces. Four acres of land. Each acre has a capital value of 10 ounces. Total is 40 ounces.
Total capital value of these assets, 110 ounces.
But we must always remember in adding capital values that these are relevant only insofar
as they are expressed in market price or potential market price.
Many writers have fallen into the trap of assuming that they can, in a similar way,
up the entire capital value of the nation or world and arrive at a meaningful figure.
Estimates of national capital or world capital, however, are completely meaningless.
The world or country cannot sell all its capital on the market.
Therefore, such statistical exercises are pointless.
They are without possible reference to the very goal of capitalization, correct estimation
Capitalization of Potential Market Price As we have indicated, capitalization applies
to all factors of production, or rather to all factors where there are markets for the
whole goods that embody them.
We may call these markets capital markets.
They are the markets for exchange of ownership, total or partial, of durable producers' goods.
Let us take the case of capital goods. The rent of a capital good is equal to its DMVP.
The capitalized value of the capital good is the sum of the future DMVPs, or the discounted
sum of the future MVPs. This is the present value of the good, and this is what the good
will sell for on the capital market.
The process of capitalization, because it permeates all sectors of the economy and because
it is flexible enough to include different types of assets, such as the total capital
assets of a firm, is a very important one in the economy.
Prices of shares of the ownership of this capital will be set at their proportionate
fraction of the total capital value of the assets.
In this way, given the MVPs, durability and the rate of interest, all the prices on the
capital market are determined, and these will be the prices in the ERE.
This is the way in which the prices of individual capital goods, machines, buildings, etc. will
be set on the market, and this is the way in which these values will be summed up to
to set the price of a bundle of capital assets, similar and dissimilar.
Share prices on the stock market will be set according to the proportion that they bear
to the capitalized value of the firm's total assets.
We have stated that all factors that can be bought and sold as whole goods on the market
are capitalized.
This includes capital goods, ground land, and durable consumers' goods.
It is clear that capital goods and durable consumers' goods can be and are capitalized.
But what of ground land?
How can this be capitalized?
We have seen in detail that the ultimate earnings of factors go to the owners of labor and of
If land can be capitalized, does this not mean that land and capital goods are really the same thing after all?
The answer to the latter question is no.
Frank Fetter's main error in capital theory was his belief that capitalization meant the scrapping of any distinction between capital goods and land.
It is still emphatically true that the earnings of basic land factors are ultimate and irreducible,
as are labor earnings, while capital goods have to be constantly produced and reproduced,
and therefore their earnings are always reducible to the earnings of ground land, labor and time.
Basic land can be capitalized for one simple reason. It can be bought and sold as a whole on the market.
This cannot be done for labor, except under a system of slavery, which of course cannot occur on the purely free market.
Since this can be and is being done, the problem arises how the prices in these exchanges are determined.
A major characteristic of land, as compared to capital goods, is that its series of future
rents is generally infinite, since, whether as basic soil or site, it is physically indestructible.
In the ERE, the series of future rents will, of course, always be the same.
The very fact that any land is ever bought and sold, by the way, is a demonstration of
the universality of time preference.
If there were no time preference for the present, then an infinite series of future rents could
never be capitalized.
A piece of land would have to have an infinite present price, and therefore could never be
sold.
The fact that lands do have prices is an indication that there is always a time preference and
that future rents are discounted to reduce to a present value.
As in the case of any other good, the capital value of land is equal to the sum of its discounted
future rents.
For example, it can be demonstrated mathematically that if we have a constant rent expected to
To be earned in perpetuity, the capital value of the asset will equal the annual rent divided
by the rate of interest.
Now it is obvious that on such land, the investor annually obtains the market rate of interest.
If in other words, annual rents will be 50 and the rate of interest is 5%, the asset
It will sell for 50 divided by 0.05 or 1,000.
The investor who purchases the asset for 1,000 ounces will earn 50 ounces a year from it
or 5%, the market rate of interest.
Groundland then is capitalized just as our capital goods, shares in capital-owning firms
and Durable Consumers Goods.
All these owners will tend to receive the same rate of interest return, and all will
receive the same rate of return in the ERE.
In short, all owned assets will be capitalized.
In the ERE, of course, the capital values of all assets will remain constant.
They will also be equal to the discounted sum of the MVPs of their unit rents.
We have seen that a key distinction between land and capital goods is that the owners
of the former sell future goods for present money, whereas the owners of the latter advance
present money, buy future goods, and later sell their product when it is less distantly
future.
This is still true, but then we must ask the question, how does the landowner come to own
this land?
The answer is, accepting his or his ancestors finding unused land and putting it to use,
that he must have bought it from someone else.
If he did so, then in the ERE, he must have bought it at its capitalized value.
If he buys the piece of land at a price of 1,000 ounces and receives 50 ounces per annum
in rent, then he earns interest, and only interest.
He sells future goods, land service, in the production process, but he too first bought
the whole land with money, therefore he too is a capitalist investor earning interest.
Pure rent, that is, rent that is not simply a return on previous investment and is therefore
not capitalized, seems therefore to be earned only by those who have found unused land themselves
or inherited it from the finders but even they do not earn pure rent suppose that a man finds land
unowned and worth zero and then fences it etc until it is now able to yield a perpetual rental
of 50 ounces per annum could we not say that he earns pure rent since he did not buy the land
capitalized from someone else, but this would overlook one of the most important features
of economic life, implicit earnings. Even if this man did not buy the land, the land is now worth
a certain capital value, the one it could obtain on the market. This capital value is, say, one
The Theory of Money and Credit
We must therefore conclude that no one receives pure rent except laborers in the form of wages, that the only incomes in the productive ERE economy are wages, the term for the prices and incomes of labor factors, and interest.
but there is still a crucial distinction between land and capital goods for we see that a fundamental
irreducible element is the capital value of land the capital value of capital goods still reduces
to wages and the capital value of land in a changing economy there is another source of income
Increases in the Capital Value of Ground Land
Typical was the man who found unused land and then sold its services.
Originally, the capital value of the land was zero.
It was worthless.
Now the land has become valuable because it earns rents.
As a result, the capital value has risen to 1,000 ounces.
His income or gain consisted of the rise of 1,000 ounces in capital value.
This of course cannot take place in the ERE. In the ERE all capital values must remain constant.
Here we see that a source of monetary gain is a rise in the capital value of land,
a rise resulting from increases in expected rental yields of land.
In the long run, increases in the capital value of capital goods are unimportant, since they resolve into increases in wages and increases in the capital value of ground land.
If the economy becomes an ERE after this particular change from 0 to 1000, then this income was a one-shot affair, rather than a continuing and recurring item.
The capital value of the land rose from zero to one thousand, and the owner can reap this income at any time.
However, after this has been reaped once, it is never reaped again.
If he sells the land for one thousand, the next buyer receives no gain from the increase in capital value.
He receives only market interest. Only interest and wages accrue continuously.
As long as the ERE continues, there will be no further gains or losses in capital value.