Economics Reference: Early Economists

English political philosopher. His greatest work is the Leviathan (1651), which contains his defense of absolute sovereignty.

The English philosopher (1632–1704) who justified the overthrow of royal power in England and the creation of a system based on the power of parliament.

Swiss philosopher and writer who held that the individual is essentially good but usually corrupted by society. His written works include The Social Contract and Émile (both 1762).

Scottish political economist and philosopher. His Wealth of Nations (1776) laid the foundations of classical free-market economic theory.

British liberal statesman, economist, and advocate of free trade: with Richard Cobden he led the Anti-Corn-Law League (1838-46).

British philosopher and jurist: a founder of utilitarianism.

British economist and statesman: with John Bright a leader of the successful campaign to abolish the Corn Laws (1846).

American economist, founder of the single tax movement, b. Philadelphia. Of a poor family, his formal education was cut short at 14, and in 1857 he emigrated to California; there he worked at various occupations before turning to newspaper writing in San Francisco.

When David Home (as his name was spelled then) entered the University of Edinburgh in 1723-25, his family expected him to pursue a career in the law. Hume, however, soon turned his attention to philosophy.

British economist who introduced the concept of marginal utility, a theory based on the measure of additional satisfaction (utility) gained by a consumer who receives one additional unit of a product or service.

English economist and writer, instrumental in the foundation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

English political economist who studied population growth as it affects general human welfare; wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).

English economist and pioneer of neo-classical economics. He was the dominant figure in British economics from the 1890s right up to the 1930s.

German founder of modern communism, in England from 1849; With Engels, he wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848). He developed his theories of the class struggle and the economics of capitalism in Das Kapital (1867; 1885; 1895). He was one of the founders of the International Workingmen's Association (First International) (1864).

Mill was born in London on 20 May 1806 and died on 7 May 1873 in Avignon, in a house next to the cemetery where his wife was buried.

Italian economist and political philosopher who began his career as a liberal but ended it as an early fascist. His two important books on economics were the Cours d'économie politique (1906) and The Manual of Political Economy (1906).

English economist. With the possible exception of German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, no great economist of the past has received so many divergent and even contradictory interpretations as David Ricardo.

French political economist. Say is famous today as the originator of Say's Law, which English economist John Maynard Keynes in General Theory (1936) pinpointed as the source of all later thinking.