Category
Economic theory. Demography
Friedrich List
The National System of Political Economy
A German historian who wrote in favor of protective tariffs and trade retaliations between industrial nations, even if they maintain free trade within each country. During the 1820s, he lived in Pennsylvania, where he contributed to the pro-tariff debates in the United States. His economic arguments were centered around refutations of Adam Smith.
Open the reader →Jane Haldimand Marcet
John Hopkins’s Notions on Political Economy
Marcet was self-taught in many fields and became a successful popularizer of several demanding fields (such as chemistry and economics) in spite of being discriminated against as a women. This book is one of her works of popularizing economic theory, as seen through the eyes of honest John Hopkins, a poor laborer on low wages.
Open the reader →Israel M. Kirzner
The Economic Point of View
Kirzner’s _The Economic Point of View_ is a thoughtful study of how and why economists are successful at sorting out certain issues but less successful at others, issues from welfare to wealth to human actions. Ludwig von Mises, for whom Kirzner once worked as a graduate assistant, wrote the Foreword to the first edition.
Open the reader →Jeremy Bentham
Defence of Usury
An 1818 edition which combines Bentham’s defence of the practice of charging interest on loans with a critique of certain taxes which increased the cost of appearing before the courts. Another copy of [this book](https://www.econlib.org/library/Bentham/bnthUs.html) can be found in HTML format at our sister website [Econlib](https://www.econlib.org/).
Open the reader →Jean-Baptiste Say
A Treatise on Political Economy
One of the most influential works on Political Economy in the 19thC. It set the stage for the development of the study of political economy in France and an early translation into English helped make it become the most used economics textbook in the United States.
Open the reader →John Stuart Mill
The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume III - Principles of Political Economy Part II
Vol. 3 of the 33 vol. Collected Works contains Part 2 of Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.
Open the reader →Adam Smith
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Cannan ed.), vol. 1
Cannan’s justly famous early 20th century edition of Smith’s Wealth of Nations with his introduction and notes.
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 5 Speeches and Evidence
<i>Speeches and Evidence</i> contains the texts of Ricardo’s numerous speeches. It consists of his speeches given in the House of Commons and evidentiary advocacies before Parliamentary committees. The introduction provides insightful context to the circumstances and events that preceded Ricardo’s appointment as a Member of Parliament and describes his subsequent influence and role on various committees.
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 3 Pamphlets and Papers 1809-1811
This volume focuses on Ricardo’s shorter essays printed in the <i>Morning Chronicle,</i> which deal with his thoughts on the inflationary monetary policy of the Bank of England and the Bullion Crises. In these essays, the genesis of Ricardo’s theory of "hard money" emerges as a tool to hedge against inflation using metallic currency. The Bullion Committee, created by the House of Commons in 1819, adopted his recommendations. His writings here gave rise to the currency school of hard money.
Open the reader →Antoine Louis Claude, Comte Destutt de Tracy
A Treatise on Political Economy
An important work in the development of French liberal thought during the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic period. Thomas Jefferson was very impressed with his writings and had them translated in English.
Open the reader →Nassau William Senior
Political Economy (1850 ed.)
This work is a summary statement of the nature of economic thought by one of the leading theorists of the English classical school in the mid-19th century.
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 1 Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
_On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation_ provides analysis of the allocation of money between capitalists, landowners, and agricultural workers in Britain. Through this analysis, Ricardo came to advocate free trade and oppose Britain’s restrictive “Corn laws.” Here are his classic commentaries on certain points of contention and divergence with the political economic writings of Adam Smith and T. R. Malthus.
Open the reader →Ludwig M. Lachmann
Capital, Expectations, and the Market Process: Essays on the Theory of the Market Economy
This volume consists of 17 of Ludwig Lachmann’s most important papers published during the period 1940-73. Two of the articles appear here in translation for the first time. Prepared especially for this volume is a new essay about the present “crisis” in economic thought. Walter Grinder’s extended introduction analyzes Lachmann’s scholarly career in four countries and his overall intellectual development.
Open the reader →Frédéric Bastiat
Economic Harmonies (FEE ed.)
This is the translation by the Foundation for Economic Education of Bastiat’s longest and best known work *Economic Harmonies*. A new translation of this work by Liberty Fund is in progress. See the [Summary of the Bastiat Project](abc) for details.
Open the reader →Thomas Robert Malthus
An Essay on the Principle of Population, vol. 1 [1826, 6th ed.]
Vol. 1 of the 6th expanded edition of <em>Essay on the Principle of Population.</em> In this work Malthus argues that there is a disparity between the rate of growth of population (which increases geometrically) and the rate of growth of agriculture (which increases only arithmetically). He then explores how populations have historically been kept in check.
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 11 General Index
The last volume of this collection is a comprehensive index to the previous ten volumes of <i>The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo.</i>
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 10 Biographical Miscellany
This volume is a collection of personal correspondence and recollections that focus on Ricardo’s life outside of his political economic endeavors. These missives concern Ricardo's character, his amiable and generous nature, his successful business dealings, and his personal relationships. There are chapters on his entrance into the stock market as a mere teenager and records of his meteoric climb within the financial community to an extremely successful station.
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 8 Letters 1819-June 1821
This period of Ricardo’s life witnessed his entrance into Parliament as a member of the House of Commons where he became an influential advocate of free trade through his opposition to Britain’s restrictive “Corn laws.” These letters preserve the intellectual give-and-take on many of the political economic issues of Ricardo’s age. The list of these eminent correspondents include: T. R. Malthus (1766-1834). Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), and Jean Baptiste-Say (1762-1832).
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 7 Letters 1816-1818
Volume 7 is the second volume of four volumes comprising the collection of Ricardo's letters. It spans the years of Ricardo’s life from 1816 to 1818. This period saw the development and initial defense of his most influential work <i>On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.</i>
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 6 Letters 1810-1815
Volume 6 is the introductory volume to the four volumes containing relevant letters between Ricardo and many influential thinkers of his age. Many of these letters influenced the development of Ricardo’s ideas on political economy. The letters within this volume span the years of Ricardo’s economic thought throughout 1814 and 1815.
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 4 Pamphlets and Papers 1815-1823
This volume contains a collection of assorted short essays written for publication in the latter part of David Ricardo’s life from 1815 to 1823. These essays include: An Essay on the Influence of a low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock (1815), Proposals for the Economical and Secure Currency (1816), Funding System (1820), On Protection to Agriculture (1822), and Plan for the Establishment of a National Bank.
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 2 Notes on Malthus
David Ricardo and T. R. Malthus were friends despite a contentious divergence of opinion on many political economic issues. This volume contains the formal remnants of their differences. Ricardo analyzes, issue-by-issue, his points of divergence to Malthus’s *Principles of Political Economy* Malthus’s contributions to political economics generally concern his bleak forecast that a geometrically growing population would surpass the arithmetically growing capacity of essential natural resources.
Open the reader →Thomas Robert Malthus
An Essay on the Principle of Population, 2 vols. [1826, 6th ed.]
This is the 6th expanded edition of <em>Essay on the Principle of Population.</em> In this work Malthus argues that there is a disparity between the rate of growth of population (which increases geometrically) and the rate of growth of agriculture (which increases only arithmetically). He then explores how populations have historically been kept in check.
Open the reader →John Bates Clark
The Distribution of Wealth: A Theory of Wages, Interest and Profits
This 1908 edition is the third reprinting of Clark’s path-breaking, yet widely under-read, 1899 textbook, in which he developed marginal productivity theory and used it to explore the way income is distributed between wages, interest, and rents in a market economy.
Open the reader →Henry George
Progress and Poverty
Perhaps Henry George’s best known work in which he examines the casuses of poverty and, among other things, blames it on the monopoly of land ownership.
Open the reader →Thomas Robert Malthus
An Essay on the Principle of Population [1798, 1st ed.]
This is the first edition of Malthus’s _Essay on the Principle of Population._ In this work Malthus argues that there is a disparity between the rate of growth of population (which increases geometrically) and the rate of growth of agriculture (which increases only arithmetically). He then explores how populations have historically been kept in check.
Open the reader →Ludwig von Mises
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (FEE ed.)
The first comprehensive treatise on economics written by a leading member of the modern Austrian school of economics.
Open the reader →Frank H. Knight
Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit
This careful work investigating the nature of profits also includes material on the institutional structure of firms and the distribution of residuals, particularly in Part III, Chapter IX-X. It contains an interesting discussion of the difference between risk and uncertainty. [Read the Liberty Classic](https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2018/Emmettriskuncertaintyprofit.html) on this title from Econlib
Open the reader →Frank H. Knight
"Cost of Production and Price Over Long and Short Periods"
A pioneering artcile on the cost of production which was pubished in one of the leading professional economics journals in the early 20th century.
Open the reader →James Mill
Elements of Political Economy
James Mill’s work offers excellent summaries of diminishing marginal returns in Chapter II, of comparative advantage in Chapter III, Section V, of the quantity theory of money and the market for foreign exchange in Chapter II, and of the aggregate budget constraint in Chapter IV. Mill’s exposition of the labor theory of value is so compelling and simple that it still represents a logic so apparently correct that students and laymen alike easily lapse into it.
Open the reader →John Millar
Letters of Sidney, on Inequality of Property. To which is added, a Treatise of the Effects of War on Commercial Prosperity
Millar continues his critique of the war against France with letters to the Earl of Lauderdale.
Open the reader →Henry Higgs
The Physiocrats: Six Lectures on the French Economistes of the 18th Century
The English historian of economic thought Higgs discusses iin a series of lectures given at the London School of Economics in 1896 the 18th century free market Physiocratic school, its origins, ideas, political and intellectual influence.
Open the reader →Richard Cantillon
Essay on the Nature of Trade in General (Higgs ed.)
Cantillon wrote one major work, *Essay on the Nature of Trade in General*, which was regarded by Jevons and Hayek as an important early contribution to the theory of marginal utility. It lay forgotten for over 100 years until Jevons rediscovered it in the late 19th century. This edition is a bi-ligual French and English version with essays on the significance of Cantillon by Higgs and Jevons.
Open the reader →Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
Capital and Interest: A Critical History of Economic Theory
Ludwig von Mises described this as a “monumental work” which “is the most eminent contribution to economic theory”. He further stated that “a man not perfectly familiar with all the ideas advanced in theses three volumes has no claim whatever to the appellation of an economist”. It is a work which made the modern intertemporal theory of interest rates possible.
Open the reader →Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
The Positive Theory of Capital
The second volume of Boehm-Bawerk’s monumental three volume work on <em>Capital and Interest.</em>
Open the reader →John Elliot Cairnes
The Character and Logical Method of Political Economy
The book consists of lectures Cairnes gave to explain the basic principles behind classical economics.
Open the reader →James M. Buchanan
The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan in 20 vols.
*The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan* is a twenty-volume series published by Liberty Fund that includes ten monographs and all of the important journal articles, papers, and essays that Buchanan has produced in a distinguished career spanning more than half a century. Liberty Fund has the electronic rights to volumes 2-10.
Open the reader →Adam Smith
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Cannan ed.), in 2 vols.
Cannan’s justly famous early 20th century edition of Smith’s *Wealth of Nations* with his introduction and notes.
Open the reader →David Ricardo
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, 11 vols (Sraffa ed.)
This eleven-volume set of _The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo_ contains all of Ricardo’s published and unpublished writings, and provides great insight into the early era of political economics by chronicling Ricardo’s significant contributions to modern economics.
Open the reader →Francis Amasa Walker
Political Economy
One of the most widely used economics text books in 19th century America.
Open the reader →Edwin Cannan
"The Application of the Theoretical Apparatus of Supply and Demand to Units of Currency"
A pioneering article on currency which was pubished in one of the leading professional economics journals in the early 20th century.
Open the reader →Walter Bagehot
The Postulates of English Political Economy
Alfred Marshall, in his introduction to this book, argued that Bagehot provided a useful service to readers by removing the older and less understood Ricardian aspects from political economy and reworking them. Bagehot in turn in his introduction, thought that English political economy in the 100 years since Adam Smith had been misunderstood abroad by being exlsively identified with the cause of free trade and English business .
Open the reader →Knut Wicksell
“The Influence of the Rate of Interest on Prices”
A paper read before the Economic Section of the British Association, 1906.
Open the reader →Jacob Viner
“Some Problems of Logical Method in Political Economy” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 25, no. 3, Mar. 1917, pp. 236–260.
Source: http://de.academic.ru/dic.nsf/dewiki/1410388
Open the reader →Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot
Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Riches (1898 ed.)
An 1898 edition of one of the more important works on economics before Adam Smith’s <i>Wealth of Nations</i>. It covers a broad range of topics including money, exchange, value, and capital investment in agriculture. Turgot discussed economic matters with Smith when Smith visited France in the 1760s.
Open the reader →Nassau William Senior
Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages
Lectures given by Senior at the University of Oxford in 1830 to offer insights into the cause and solution of recent rioting by labourers in England.
Open the reader →Leonard E. Read
“I, Pencil: My Family Tree” as told to Leonard E. Read, Dec. 1958
A charming story which explains how something as apparently simple as a pencil is in fact the product of a very complex economic process based upon the division of labor, international trade, and comparative advantage.
Open the reader →Israel M. Kirzner
The Economics of Ludwig von Mises: Toward a Critical Reappraisal
A collection of papers from a Symposium on the economics of Mises held at the 44th meeting of the Southern Economics Association in Atlanta, Georgia on 15 November, 1974. There are articles by Laurence Moss, Fritz Machlup, Israel Kirzner, Murray Rothbard, William Baumgarth, and Karen Vaughn.
Open the reader →Ludwig M. Lachmann
New Directions in Austrian Economics
A collection of papers which explores methodoogy, econometrics, social cost, monopoly theory, the supply of money, interest theory, and macroeconomics.
Open the reader →James M. Buchanan
L.S.E. Essays on Cost
A volume in the collection Studies in Economic Theory first published by the Institute for Humane Studies. This is a collection of essays written in the LSE opportunity cost tradition by scholars associated with the London School of Economics between 1937 and 1960. The papers are by Lionel Robbins, Hayek, Edwards, Coase, Thirlby, and Wiseman.
Open the reader →Israel M. Kirzner
The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics
A volume in the collection *Studies in Economic Theory,* first published by the Institute for Humane Studies. This is a collection of papers given at a conference on Austrian economics in June 1974. They cover the uniqueness of the Austrian tradition, papers on praxeology and method, the history of Austrian school, capital theory, theory of money, inflation, and the market process.
Open the reader →John Stuart Mill
Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy (Ashley ed.)
_Principles of Political Economy, with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy_ was published in 1848 in London and was republished with changes and updates a total of seven times in Mill’s lifetime. The edition presented here is that prepared by W. J. Ashley in 1909, based on Mill’s 7th edition of 1870. The text provides English translations to several lengthy quotations originally quoted by Mill in French.
Open the reader →James Mill
Selected Economic Writings
A collection of Mill’s writings on economics, including his early essays on The Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain, Commerce Defended, and selections from his Elements of Political Economy and his History of British India.
Open the reader →Ludwig M. Lachmann
Capital and its Structure
A reprint of Lachmann’s 1956 classic of Austrian capital theory. In this book Lachmann shows how firms invest to position capital goods with one another, thus creating the complex capital structure. He shows how capital formation and adjustment is a continuous transformation which is immensely complex in its combinations and heterogeneous flow, and how it is capable of co-ordinating the ever-changing plans of individual participants.
Open the reader →Friedrich August von Hayek
“The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945)
One of Hayek’s most important contributions to economic theory is his demonstration of the part prices play in disseminating widely diffused knowledge about consumer demand and the availablility of economic resources in order to make rational economic calculation possible.
Open the reader →Irving Fisher
“Dollar Stabilization”
The 11th edition of the <i>Encyclopedia Britannica</i> was the last edition which appeared before the First World War destroyed the old liberal order in Europe. The next edition, the 12th, reproduced the 11th edition with the addition of 4 supplementary volumes which covered the war and its immediate aftermath. This article is part of the supplementary volumes.
Open the reader →Frank A. Fetter
Capital, Interest, and Rent: Essays in the Theory of Distribution
Rothbard has collected Fetter’s journal articles and book reviews from the period 1897 to 1937 which cover the general topics of capital, interest, and rent.
Open the reader →