Fronsperger and Laffemas: 16th-century Precursors of Modern Economic Ideas

This volume introduces two unique and hitherto largely unknown contributions to the making of modern economic knowledge and makes them available internationally for the first time in full English translation. The messages of the books are seemingly contradictory, one focuses on the role of individual interests and the other on the role of government., but together they form two important pillars for the economics profession: self-interest and industrial policy. - Written in 1597 Barthélemy de Laffemas’ General regulation for the establishment of manufactures (originally in French: Reiglement général pour dresser les manufactures) is one of the earliest voices in the history of political economy emphasizing the necessity of manufacturing and large-scale industry as the source of the wealth of nations. Located somewhat at the cross-roads between medieval Scholasticism and early mercantilism the book presents a basic version of the infant industry argument and European standard model of economic development which evolved into the works of Enlightenment thinkers such as Colbert and Friedrich List and of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrial policy in all the countries that followed England’s path to industrialization, including the post-WW II Marshall Plan.  - Leonhard Fronsperger’s On the praise of self-interest (German original: Von dem Lob deß Eigen Nutzen, 1564) is the first documented instance of the ‘Mandeville paradox’, a theorem in modern economics usually associated with much later writings including Bernard de Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (1705/14), and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776).