Essays on the Nature of Trade in General
- 408 pages
- 15 hours of reading
Richard Cantillon Book order
Richard Cantillon was an Irish-French economist whose foundational work is considered the cradle of political economy. Despite limited biographical details, he achieved significant success as a banker and merchant early in his career. His prosperity was built upon astute political and business connections, cultivated through family ties and early professional relationships. Cantillon's economic insights were honed through his involvement in speculative ventures, which brought him great wealth but also drew the ire of debtors, who pursued him relentlessly until his death.
- 2023
- 2015
Essay on the Nature of Trade in General
- 176 pages
- 7 hours of reading
The Liberty Fund edition is a modernized translation of Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (1755) with a new introduction by Antoin E. Murphy. In the Essay , Cantillon outlined an extraordinary model-building approach showing how the economy could be built up, through progressive stages, from a command, barter, closed economy to a market economy, which uses money and is open. Though written in the eighteenth century, the Essay has a considerable resonance for a twenty-first century audience. Antoin E. Murphy is Emeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.