Pre-Classical Economists Volume I: Charles Davenant (1656–1714) and William Petty (1623–1687)

Pioneers in Economics

by Mark Blaug

Charles Davenant was one of the leading economic pamphleteers of the 1690s. He frequently developed general principles, some of which sound almost like the early writings of Adam Smith. He was, however, a Mercantilist in the sense that he underlined the advantages of a favourable balance of trade as a source of political power, favoured population growth and decried luxury spending. William Petty focused on some practical questions of his times including war finance, monetary reform, relief for the poor. His work contains a veritable cornucopia of terms and concepts that came to dominate economic thinking for the next three centuries; 'full employment' and 'ceteris paribus', the idea of national income as identical to national expenditure, public works as a method of dealing with unemployment etc. However his greatest contribution was the invention of what he called 'political arithmetic', the quantitative estimation of both the stock of national wealth and the flow of national income to determine the appropriate base for taxation.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Mark Blaug is a British economist (naturalised in 1982), who has covered a broad range of topics over his long career. In 1955 he received his PhD from Columbia University in New York. Besides shorter periods in public service and in international organisations he has held academic appointments in - among others - Yale University, the University of London, the London School of Economics and the University of Buckingham. He currently lives in Leiden and works as Visiting Professor in the Netherlands, University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University in Rotterdam, where he is also co-director of CHIMES (Center for History in Management and Economics).
Mark Blaug has made far reaching contributions to a range of topics in economic thought throughout his career. Apart from valuable contributions to the economics of art and the economics of education, he is best known for his work in history of economic thought and the methodology of economics.