Essay on the Nature of Trade in General (LF ed.)

• Richard Cantillon (author)
• Antoin E. Murphy (editor)

The Liberty Fund edition is a modernized translation of Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (1755) with a new introduction by Antoin E. Murphy. Cantillon outlined an extraordinary model-building approach showing how the economy could be built up through progressive stages from a command, barter, closed economy to an open market economy. Though written in the eighteenth century, the Essay has a considerable resonance for a twenty-first century audience.