Frank A Fetter on the Subjective Nature of Value in Economic Theory

Prior to the advent of a mature Ludwig von Mises, Fetter was the world's leading subjective-value theorist. While Mises would bring the theory of money within a subjective-value, general theory of economics in 1912, Fetter had by 1904 already extended the principle of subjective value to bring factor prices and the rate of interest into a unified theory.

Fetter himself was so adamant about the subjective nature of value in economic theory that he disdained referring to the watershed of economic thought in the 1870s as the Marginalist Revolution, preferring the adjectives "subjective" or "psychological" to describe the new theory.

--Jeffrey M. Herbener, "Frank A. Fetter: A Forgotten Giant," in The Great Austrian Economists, ed. Randall G. Holcombe (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999), 125-126.