The Role of Industry In Economic Development: The Contrasting Theories of François Quesnay and Adam Smith

Walter Eltis
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Walter Eltis: National Economic Development Office and Exeter College

Chapter 10 in The Balance between Industry and Agriculture in Economic Development, 1988, pp 175-197 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The benefits from industrialisation as seen by the great French Physiocrats and Adam Smith were immensely different. François Quesnay argued from 1759 onwards that the industrial sector of the economy was ‘sterile’, and that state support for industrialisation in France in the seventeenth century had reduced population, cut living standards and undermined government finances. Adam Smith insisted just seventeen years later, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), that the benefits from the division of labour which could only be enjoyed in industry had already raised the standard of living of a British labourer above that of an African King (pp. 23–4).

Keywords: Commercial Sector; Perfect Competition; Economic Surplus; External Benefit; Agricultural Advance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1988
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-349-10271-6_10

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-10271-6_10

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