Two of the earliest novels in English, Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe and Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift, are widely perceived as an entertaining adventure story and a pioneering work of science fiction. Viewed by modern economists, however, they appear as expressions of...

Early in the 18th century, before the birth of political economy as a discipline, two of the earliest novels in the English language were published: Robinson Crusoe (1719) by writer and economic entrepreneur Daniel Defoe, and Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by the cleric and political adviser...

Early in the 18th century, before the birth of political economy as a discipline, two of the earliest novels in the English language were published: Robinson Crusoe (1719) by writer and economic entrepreneur Daniel Defoe, and Gulliver's Travels (1726) by the cleric and political adviser Jonathan...

Nicolas Dutot (1684–1741) is an important figure for the history of economic thought, as a pioneer in monetary theory and price statistics, and for economic history as a chronicler of John Law’s System. Yet until recently very little about him was known, some of it incorrect. I present...

Early modern Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries witnessed an unprecedented increase in the rate of economic growth, and governments entertained a wide range of proposals aimed at developing and harnessing foreign trade and emerging financial markets. In his magisterial...

John Rae has recently been rediscovered as a precursor of the endogenous growth theory. This study argues that Rae needs to be rediscovered a second time for his original contribution to clarify the role of the innovation and technical change within the economic systems. The aim of this paper is...

This paper examines A.R.J. Turgot's explanation of the scope and method of economic science. We begin by highlighting two contradictory economic methodologies in Turgot's writings according to the literature: one in his text on progress and another in his papers on concrete economic matters. An...

This paper looks into the scholastic definitions of the “just price” in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and Bl. John Duns Scotus (1265-1308) and investigates whether they are conceptually different from the current “market price”. A specific focus is on whether government...

Montchrétien was definitely mercantilist. He praises the ancients, their honors and their self-discipline, but notes, like Serra, that there was no concept of Political Economy in Antiquity. The words, however, appear for the first time in the pseudoaristotelian Oeconomica II, where the...

Most contemporary moral defenses of capitalism rely on ideas drawn from the modern philosophic tradition that emerged in the 17th-18th centuries. Almost always, advocates of a free market society have either invoked the notion of a social contract, a theory of natural rights, the insistence that...