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 In the present article, we use two important unpublished writings by Butré to discuss and assess...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 this study, the historical roots of individuality will be examined. According to the view of economic individuality, pursuit of self-interest is the fundamental motivation for all of human beings. When we look into the eighteenth century, the main argument was whether the rise of the...

Antonio Serra wrote in 1613 an outstanding analysis, on the economy of the Reign of Naples, which is still very little known out of Italy; where he is largely recognized as the founder of the "Southern question". This article proposes a larger view of Serra’s pioneering achievements, by...

This paper seeks to report and analyse the economic thought of Ibn al-Qayyim, a great thinker of Islam. He discussed mainly the problems of price control, market mechanism, supervision of economic activities (al-hisbah), riches and poverty, interest and zakah, at different places in his numerous...

Al-Ghazali′s economics is anchored on five necessary Shari‘ah -mandated foundations of individual and social life: religion, life, family, property, and intellect. He focuses on the economic aspects of maslahah (social utility), distinguishing between necessities, comforts and luxuries....

This paper presents the origins of the Economics of innovation describing the economic thought of the economists in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries. In this period and in particular during the Industrial Revolution the economists argue the main effects of inventions and machines for...

Nowadays the innovation is one of the most important determinant for increasing the wealth of the nations. The patterns of technological innovation are studied by Economics of innovation. The aim of this paper is to prove that the origins of the Economics of innovation go back to many years...

«Reflexiones sobre el estado actual del comercio de España» —Reflections on the current state of commerce in Spain— was anonymously published in 1761. At the time both the treatise and its author, the merchant Simón de Aragorri, were well known. Nevertheless, the work vanished for...

David Hume (1711-1776) is arguably the most esteemed philosopher to have written in the English language. During his lifetime, however, Hume was as well if not better known for his contributions to political economy, particularly for the essays published as the <em>Political Discourses</em> (1752). Hume...

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...