The Theory of Production and Distribution in Cantillon's Essai

Tony Aspromourgos

Oxford Economic Papers, 1989, vol. 41, issue 2, 356-73

Abstract: The major historical significance of Richard Cantillon's Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General was to provide the theoretical bridge between seventeenth-century English economics and French Physiocracy. This article presents a comprehensive interpretation of Cantillon's theory of production, distribution, and value, and demonstrates that the argument of the Essai is best revealed by grasping the role that economic surplus plays within it. This serves to confirm that the Essai is a theoretical contribution to classical economics, but remains underrated, notwithstanding its "rediscovery" by no less a figure than W. S. Jevons over a century ago. Copyright 1989 by Royal Economic Society.

Date: 1989
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