Cassel, Gustav (goos'täf kä'sul) [key], 1866–1945, Swedish economist and authority on international monetary problems. He was a delegate to many world economic conferences and wrote valuable papers on foreign exchange. He developed the theory of purchasing power parity, which postulates that low interest rates would probably encourage people to spend savings rather than live off the interest that their savings would generate. Among his books are Nature and Necessity of Interest (1903), Money and Foreign Exchange after 1914 (1922), Fundamental Thoughts on Economics (1925), and On Quantitative Thinking in Economics (1935).
