Johann Heinrich von Thünen (24 June 1783 – 22 September 1850), sometimes spelled Thuenen, was a prominent nineteenth-century economist and a native of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, now in northern Germany.

Wood was a very important fuel for heating and cooking and is very heavy and difficult to transport so it is located close to the city.

Since grains last longer than dairy products and are much lighter than fuel, reducing transport costs, they can be located further from the city.

Beyond the fourth ring lies the wilderness, which is too great a distance from the central city for any type of agricultural product.

In the second volume of his great work The Isolated State, Thunen developed some of the mathematical foundations of marginal productivity theory and wrote about the Natural Wage indicated by the formula √AP, in which A equals the value of the product of labor and capital, and P equals the subsistence of the laborer and their family.

In The Isolated State, he also coined the term Grenzkosten (marginal cost) which would later be popularized by Alfred Marshall in his Principles of Economics.