A Treatise on Money. Volume I The Pure Theory of Money [and] Volume II The Applied Theory of Money.

London, Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1930. . First edition, first impression; 2 vols; 8vo (22 x 15 cm); ownership inscriptions in pen to front free endpaper recto of each vol., manuscript annotations and loose notes in pencil throughout; publisher's blue cloth, spine lettered in gold, extremities a little rubbed, overall a very good copy.
An economist's copy with manuscript notes in pencil of Keynes' first major contribution to the development of modern monetary theory.

'The world-wide slump after 1929 prompted Keynes to attempt an explanation of, and new methods for controlling, the vagaries of the trade-cycle' (PMM). The resultant work, A Treatise on Money, published in 1930, anticipated many of the key arguments that would later appear in his General Theory of Employment. The central being that if the amount of money saved exceeds the amount invested, which can happen if interest rates are too high, then unemployment will rise. This is in part a result of people not wanting to spend too high a proportion of what employers pay out, making it difficult, in aggregate, for employers to make a profit.

This copy with the manuscript notes of J.G. Picton, an economist at the University of Birmingham who completed his thesis on 'Bank advances in industry' in 1933. The notes likely date from the previous year, with pencil jottings made to a loose newspaper fragment from the Daily Herald for Thursday, September 8, 1932. Picton was later recorded in the American Economic Association's directory of foreign economists for the year 1957.