Essay on the Nature of Trade in General

by Richard Cantillon, Antoin E. Murphy (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780865978744
Publisher:	Liberty Fund, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/07/2015
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Part 1

1 Of wealth 3

2 Of human societies 3

3 Of villages 5

4 Of market towns 6

5 Of cities 8

6 Of capital cities 9

7 The work of a laborer is worth less than that of a craftsman 10

8 Some craftsmen earn more and others less according to different cases and circumstances 11

9 The number of laborers craftsmen and others who work in a state is naturally proportioned to the need for them 12

10 The price and intrinsic value of a thing in general is the amount of land and labor required to produce it 14

11 Of the par or relation between the value of the land and the value of labor 16

12 All classes and men in the state are maintained or enriched at the expense of the landlords 21

13 The circulation and exchange of goods as well as the production of goods and of merchandise are carried out in Europe by entrepreneurs in conditions of risk 24

14 The moods fashions, and modes of living of the prince and more particularly of the landlords determine the uses to which the land is put and are responsible for variations in the market prices of all things 28

15 The increase and decrease of the state's population depends principally on the tastes fashions and modes of living of the landlords 32

16 The more labor in a state the greater the extent that it is considered naturally wealthy 40

17 Of metals and money particularly gold and silver 44

Part 2

1 Of barter 55

2 Of market prices 56

3 Of the circulation of money 58

4 Further reflection on the rapidity or slowness of the circulation of money in exchange 65

5 Of the inequality in the circulation of actual money in a state 69

6 Of the increase and reduction in the actual quantity of money in a state 74

7 Continuation of the same topic relating to the increase or reduction of the actual quantity of money in a state 81

8 Further reflection on changes in the quantity of money in a state 83

9 Of the interest of money and its causes 91

10 And last The causes of the increase and decrease of the interest rate on money in a state 97

Part 3

1 Of foreign trade 105

2 Of the exchanges and their nature 113

3 Further explanations toward an understanding of the nature of exchanges 118

4 Of the changes in the proportion of values relative to metals that are used as money 123

5 Of the augmentation and diminution of the denominational value of coin 131

6 Of banks and their credit 136

7 Other insights and inquiries concerning the utility of a National Bank 139

8 Of the refinements of credit of general banks 144

Index 147