Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T14:26:12.439Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Macroeconomic thought of Sir William Petty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

James H. Ullmer
James H. Ullmer
Affiliation:
Western Carolina University, Cullowhee NC.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Sir William Petty (1623–1687) is generally known to historians of economic thought as an early contributor to classical political economy. In fact, Karl Marx claimed—rightly, I believe—that Petty was the founder of that school of thought (Marx 1867, p. 81). Frank Amati and Tony Aspromourgos echo the sentiment that Petty, and not Adam Smith, was “the founder of classical political economy, that school which had its culmination in the Ricardian economic theory” (Amati and Aspromourgos 1985, p. 127). Aspromourgos has also observed that Petty wrote A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions, as well as other works, in order to provide “an answer to the questions of how to maximize total employment and surplus labour, and how to best utilize surplus labour” (Aspromourgos 1996, p. 16, emphasis added).

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 2004 , pp. 401 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Amati, F. & Aspromourgos, T. 1985. “Petty Contra Hobbes: A Previously Untranslated Manuscript.” Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (01): 127–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appleby, J. O. 1978. Economic Thought and Idealogy in Seventeenth-Century England, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Aspromourgos, T. 1996. On the Origins of Classical Economics, Distribution and Value from William Petty to Adam Smith, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hobbes, T. 1651. The Leviathan, edited by Rhys, Ernest. London: J. M. Dent and Sons Limited, 1931.Google Scholar
Horsefield, J. K. 1960. British Monetary Experiments 1650–1710, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edition with revisions. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Marx, K. 1867. Capital: ACritique of Political Economy, Vol. I, translated by Moore, S. and Aveling, E., edited by Engels, Friedrich. New York: International Publishers, 1967.Google Scholar
Petty, Sir W. 1662. A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions, Reprinted in The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, Vol. I, edited by Hull, C. H.. Cambridge: University Press, 1899, pp. 1–97.Google Scholar
Petty, Sir W. 1690. Political Arithmetic, Reprinted in The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, Vol. I, edited by Hull, C. H.. Cambridge: University Press, 1899, pp. 233–313.Google Scholar
Petty, Sir W. 1691a. Verbum Sapenti, Reprinted in The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, Vol. I, edited by Hull, C. H.. Cambridge: University Press, 1899, pp. 99–120.Google Scholar
Petty, Sir W. 1691b. The Political Anatomy of Ireland, Reprinted in The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, Vol. I, edited by Hull, C. H.. Cambridge: University Press, 1899, pp. 121–31.Google Scholar
Petty, Sir W. 1695. Quantulumcunque Concerning Money, Reprinted in The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, Vol. II, edited by Hull, C. H.. Cambridge: University Press, 1899, pp. 437–48.Google Scholar
Petty, Sir W. 1927. The Petty Papers, 2 vols, edited from the Bowood Papers by the Marquis of Landsdowne. London: Constable and Company Limited.Google Scholar
Roncaglia, A. 1977. Petty: The Origin of Political Economy, translated by Cherubini, I.. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1985.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J. A. 1954. History of Economic Analysis, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar