The chapter goes over the main stages in the development of Quesnay’s Tableau Économique. The traditional interpretation of this development as a fundamentally continuous process of clarification and elaboration is confirmed. By discussing the opposite view, however, a clearer picture of the...

L'antiphysiocratie des saint-simoniens peut paraître assez naturelle. En effet, une doctrine saint-simonienne réputée pour son industrialisme utopiste ne pouvait, semble t-il, que s'opposer à ce que Smith a appelé le "système agricole". Cette interprétation, sans être totalement...

L’antiphysiocratie des saint-simoniens peut paraître assez naturelle. En effet, une doctrine saint-simonienne réputée pour son industrialisme utopiste ne pouvait, semble t-il, que s’opposer à ce que Smith a appelé le "système agricole". Cette interprétation, sans être totalement...

From 1759 to 1762, François Quesnay had systematically appealed to an obscure physiocrat, Charles Richard de Butré, when he had to make a numerical estimate or to do a nonelementary computation. In the present article, we use two important unpublished writings by Butré to discuss and assess...

In order to discuss the ‘rational foundation’ of certain aspects of Quesnay´s theory we use a simple formalization of the necessary connections between assumptions about the techniques in use, the distribution of income between the classes and sectors, the system of relative prices. We...

China's rise drives a growing impact of China on economics. So far, this mainly works via the force of example, but there is also an emerging role of Chinese thinking in economics. This paper raises the question how far Chinese perspectives can affect certain foundational principles in...

China's rise drives a growing impact of China on economics. So far, this mainly works via the force of example, but there is also an emerging role of Chinese thinking in economics. This paper raises the question how far Chinese perspectives can affect certain foundational principles in...

The story of Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours has often been described as one of success. The man was a well-known statesman, economist and entrepreneur in late eighteenth-century France and his main legacy, the famous and still thriving Du Pont company, suggests a brilliant trajectory. The aim...

The publication in 1765 of Nicolas Baudeau’s work Idées d’un citoyen sur les besoins, les droits et les devoirs des vrais pauvres is the starting point of an analysis of social misery. Baudeau classifies poverty: poverty by age, poverty by disease, poverty due to accidents of life. This...

Ákos Navratil (1875-1952) is an outstanding theoretical economist from the first half of the 20th century. A selection of his works was published as volume 8 in the series Classics in Hungarian Economics (Old truths and new theories in economics by Ákos Navratil, (int., ed. by M. Hild)). The...

At the end of the 17th century capitalism had become the new social and economic order in northern Western Europe. Ever since the trading channels through which money and commodities change hands between the different agents, the actual sequence of these all-comprising monetary exchange...

Ákos Navratil (1875-1952) is an outstanding theoretical economist from the first half of the 20th century. A selection of his works was published as volume 8 in the series Classics in Hungarian Economics (Old truths and new theories in economics by Ákos Navratil, (int., ed. by M. Hild)). The...

In this article, we show that Quesnay, while himself devoted to a major analytical effort to create what was at the time, like today, assessed as an original and far-reaching social theory, was also very much concerned with the development of a systematic empirical inquiry of French economy and...

The Physiocrats believed that wealth came exclusively from the land, that nature was fecund and man could harness its reproductive forces. Capital investments in agriculture and hard work would create profits that circulated to other sectors and supported all social institutions. Physiocracy,...