Bücher der Reihe Economic Ideas that Built Europe

Although no less an authority than Joseph A. Schumpeter proclaimed that Antonio Serra was the worlds first economist, he remains something of a dark horse of economic historiography. Nearly nothing is known about Serra except that he wrote and died in jail, and his Short Treatise is so rare that only nine original copies are known to have survived the ravages of time. What, then, can a book written nearly four centuries ago tell us about the problems we now face? Serras key insight, studying the economies of Venice and Naples, was that wealth was not the result of climate or providence but of policies to develop economic activities subject to increasing returns to scale and a large division of labour. Through a very systematic taxonomy of economic life, Serra then went on from this insight to theorize the causes of the wealth of nations and the measures through which a weak, dependent economy could achieve worldly melioration. At a time when leading economists return to biological explanations for the failure of their theories, the Short Treatise can remind us that there are elements of history which numbers and graphs cannot convey or encompass, and that there are less despondent lessons to be learned from our past. Serras remarkable tract is introduced by a lengthy and illuminating study of his historical context and legacy for the theoretical and cultural history of economics.

Written by one of Italys leading historians, this book analyses the context and legacy of Gaetano Filangieris seven-volume Science of Legislation. The study engages with the unique history of Enlightenment Naples, the intellectual traditions upon which Filangieri drew, and the powerful repercussions of the American Revolution in eighteenth-century Italy to re-draw the map of Enlightenment republicanism and the early history of human rights and their political economy.Particularly, the book elucidates Montesquieus polyvalent influence on the development of Enlightenment political philosophy, the intricate relationship between natural law and natural rights (later human rights), the emergence of an idiom and a theory of constitutionalism as the only safeguard against absolutist abuses and democratic excesses (whether due to communitarian zeal or the influence of charismatic leaders), and the importance of Freemasonry as a school of political theory and a locus of political action and re-action at the time. This brings the book to a lengthy discussion of the tensions between liberalism and poverty as well as patriotism and cosmopolitanism in the Italian republican tradition themes all too relevant in todays historiographical landscape and Filangieris eventual contribution to these debates and to the institutionalization of the rights of man as a political category and an influence on political economy in Enlightenment Europe.The second part of the book deals with Filangieris legacy, engaging both with his immediate acolytes, such as Francesco Mario Pagano, drafter of the Neapolitan constitution of 1799, and his detractors, such as the conservative Vincenzo Cuoco. The book ends with groundbreaking chapters on Filangieris reception in France and in Europe at large, focusing on Benjamin Constants little-understood critique of Filangieri and the tensions between the constitutional republicanism of the late Italian Enlightenment on the one hand and the nascent tradition of liberalism on the other. In doing so, this book not only explains the common roots of these two traditions, but also why they diverged and what consequences this had for Italian and European history.

Between its first date of publication in 1684 and 1784 classic 'Oesterreich über Alles Wann es Nur Will' went through more than twenty known editions which makes it, arguably, Europe's most successful 'economics textbook' prior to Adam Smith's 'Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' (1776). Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk laid in this book the foundations of what has become known as the 'mercantilist' political economy - a strategy for achieving national wealth and political strength simultaneously by building up a competitive domestic manufacturing industry with the help of the state. Hörnigk advocated standard recipes known from modern development economics, such as import substitution, protective tariffs on select goods as well as bounties and other financial as also logistic support by a proactive interventionist state in order to safeguard and nurture domestic industries that were in a state of infancy but which would be promising candidates for future growth and economies of scale. As new work by Erik Reinert and Lars Magnusson has shown, contrary to a sort of mainstream view in modern economics and economic history, it was such policies that tended to make European countries rich in the pre-industrial age, also laying the basic foundations for subsequent industrialization - even the 'Great Divergence' between Europe and Asia post 1800. Most European states were interventionist during the nineteenth century. They obviously drew upon a menu of recipes and political economy schedules that had circulated widely in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and which would subsequently also influence the major works by Friedrich List, Daniel Raymond and other nineteenth-century development theorists.Based on Hörnigk's popularity and the publication pattern for the book, the 'Hörnigk' strategy stood at the core of many a treatise and book written on economic matters in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe; in fact Hörnigk may be called the forefather of modern development economics. He certainly was a towering figure in the 'Germanic' economic discourses of the early modern period. 'Austria Supreme, if It So Wishes (1684)' will be the first-ever English translation of a work the importance of which for European economic development and the 'European Miracle' cannot be overestimated.

This volume presents Martin Luther¿s contribution to the modern economic sciences, providing a detailed introduction and revised translation of his 1524 pamphlet, ¿On Commerce and Usury¿ (¿Von Kauffshandlung vnd Wucher¿).

"e;Report on the Agrarian Law"e; (1795) and Other Writings' is the first modern English translation of perhaps the greatest work of the Spanish Enlightenment, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos's 'Informe sobre la Ley Agraria' (1795). A major work of political economy and a beautifully crafted philosophical history of Spain's political development until the eighteenth century, 'Informe sobre la Ley Agraria' is a classic work of the Spanish Enlightenment. Displaying the richness of Spanish Enlightenment writing on political economy emerging from a fecund conjugation of foreign writers (Smith, Ferguson, Condillac, Mirabeau, Genovesi) with Spanish writers (Ulloa, Olavide, Uztariz, Campomanes), this masterpiece explores the lessons learned from the shortcomings of the Spanish Crown's economic policies in the eighteenth century.