CANTILLON, Richard.

£50,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Essai sur la nature du commerce en général. First edition, one of the very few copies containing Barrois's sale catalogue, which lists Cantillon's work under his initial. The book is notable for its model-building, analysis of market forces and entrepreneurship, outline of the circular flow of income, and monetary theory. The Essai significantly influenced Quesnay's concept of circular flow and Adam Smith's theory of resource allocation in the Wealth of Nations (1776).By distinguishing market price from intrinsic value, and showing how resources shift toward sectors where market price exceeds intrinsic value and away from those where it falls below, Cantillon (c. 1680-1734) anticipated Smith's contrast between market and natural price. He also foreshadowed later population theory in a concise but remarkably complete anticipation of Malthusian principles.Cantillon, an Irish-born banker and economist displaced to continental Europe by the Williamite confiscations, refined his financial expertise while working for the British Army's paymaster-general during the later War of the Spanish Succession. He subsequently amassed fortunes by speculating against John Law's Mississippi Company and by purchasing put options at the height of the South Sea Bubble - successes that reinforced his conviction that money should rest on intrinsically valuable metals.The Essai, his only published economic work, bears the imprint of the London bookseller Fletcher Gyles, who had died some 14 years ear

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