Search

The theme of population is recurrent in economics, particularly in France. The literature in history of economic thought related to these issues is extensive, especially, in the case of French liberal economists, from the period starting with the writings of Malthus up to the middle of the 19th century. Few studies, however, focus on the position of economic liberals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The purpose of this paper is therefore to extend the analysis and provide an account of the key debates amongst the French liberal economists of this period concerning what they referred to as "the problem of population". We shall first see that this "problem" consisted in a stagnation of French population levels due to a drop in the birth rate, leading to negative consequences for the economy and elsewhere. This led economists to name causes and solutions to this decline on which the French liberals were divided. For some authors, the causes arose from a change in lifestyles, for others to increasing intervention by the state. Lastly, we will present the contrasting ideas for solutions to allow the birth rate to increase again. For some, the solution was a moral one: what was needed was a change of mindset. For others, the solution was economic, i.e., the human condition could be improved by free trade. For others, the solution lay in legislation: the state should encourage individuals to have more children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claude-Jacques Herbert's Essay on the general police of grain (Essai sur la police générale des grains) has particular features that could have enabled it to make a crucial contribution to the gradual conversion of French public opinion to free trade at the end of 1753. First, the essay is an explicit criticism of Delamare's Treatise on the police (Traité de la police) and of the French regulations of the grain trade. Against them, Herbert promotes new principles grounded on a specific conception of free trade and on the central role played by prices in economics. Reviewing these elements, we may suppose that the success of Herbert's Essay can also be explained by the conceptions it proposes. These could indeed have been approved both by the proponents of internal and moderate free trade and those of total freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional interpretation of Burke's political economy emphasised his defense of free trade, and his intellectual relationship with Smith has also been the centre of scholarly attention. This article attempts a systematic comparison between Burke and Smith and shows in detail how Burke's concern with political stability, a great source of his economic thinking, helped distinguish his political economy from that of Smith's. Burke was especially concerned with the link between the conservation of manners and social development. The differences between Burke and Smith suggest their economic thought could be read in distinct contexts of Enlightenment thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1870 s and 1880 s, the scientist, logician, and pragmatist philosopher Charles S. Peirce possessed an advanced knowledge of mathematical economics, having mastered and criticised Cournot as early as 1871. In 1884 he engaged in a multi-round debate with the editors of The Nation over the economics of trade liberalisation in the case of a proposed trade treaty with Spain concerning import tariffs on Cuban and Puerto Rican sugar. While the mathematical underpinings of Peirce's intervention in the debate are not explicit, they are evident in light of Peirce's unpublished writing on Cournot. The debate is reconstructed and related carefully both to Peirce's understanding of mathematical economics and to his philosophy of science. Peirce's intervention is one of the earliest intricate applications of mathematical economics to public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, as with "models", the I word i "methodology" was admittedly not in use, nor "method" as its synonym, but, I pace i Walter, issues of method/methodology (in I our i sense) were I central i to the Ricardo-Malthus discussions. Granted, "classical political economy" (as vulgarly described) I is i a "distorting myth" and was I not i a "unified entity"; yet I cannot agree with Walter that "political economy" was simply a non-autonomous subset of politics, certainly not in Ricardo's opinion. Before method and models: The political economy of Malthus and Ricardo: by Ryan Walter, Oxford University Press, New York, 2021, 272 pp., £64, ISBN 978-0-197-60305-5. [Extracted from the article]

During the 1750s the grain debate agitated French opinion and contributed to the creation of the new science of political economy. It was notable as a confrontation between those who defended the regulation of commerce and partisans of free trade. In this paper we test some of the arguments made at that time, using cliometric techniques which we apply to existing data as well as to new, reconstituted data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ralph G. Hawtrey was the British Treasury's only economist during the interwar period. He developed a monetary theory of the cycle by which the inherent instability of credit under the gold standard caused fluctuations in output, incomes, and prices. Hawtrey was a monetary specialist who influenced the inner process of policymaking through his capacity as advisor to Blackett, Niemeyer, and Norman. An extensive analysis of his monetary theory in an open economy provides insight into why in the 1920s he advocated the general adoption of the gold exchange standard coupled with cooperation among central banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) defended free trade in light of a providential account of Nature, according to which there would be an “identity of interests” (Halévy 1901–1904). He thereby tried to rid economic thought of references to conflicts and thus pursued the physiocrats’ programme rather than Adam Smith's. In fact, Stewart claimed that (i) self-love depends on an accommodation to Providence, by which individuals restrain their passions; (ii) self-love fosters actions that lead to a direct increase of public happiness; (iii) the perfectibility of mind allows to dismiss “legal despotism”, which can be replaced by religious education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reveals how the emerging historiography of industrialisation in Britain moulded a lasting division between two explanations of its origins, one emphasising discontinuity, individual enterprise, and free markets, the other evolutionary change, the role of the state and the importance of empire. Both views were historically informed but led in contrary directions in the highly polarised politics of early twentieth-century Britain, the former linked to support for free trade and liberalism as the basis of economic welfare, the latter to support for Conservative tariff reform and imperial reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cambridge University raised the status of Political Economy in the mid-nineteenth century, a rise finalised and symbolised by the full-fledged professorship conferred upon Henry Fawcett in 1863. This article sets out a historical description of this rise towards its final phase, by examining economic discourses of academics on the Cambridge network. The central observation is that behind this process was a gradual acceptance of free trade, gradual in the sense that it was not as a sudden reaction to the repeal of the Corn Laws but with the changing portrayal of Ricardo as the economist of rent theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]