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Lecture 4 of 15 · The History of Economic Thought

What or who was the beginning of modern economics?

Murray N. Rothbard · 2:20

What or who was the beginning of modern economics? by Murray N. Rothbard is a free audio lecture (2:20) at freecapitalists.org, part of the 15-lecture series The History of Economic Thought.

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0:00I guess modern economics or the scientific doctrine begins with Cantillon, Richard Cantillon, who is a very interesting character, too, and really with Cantillon, who's hardly talked about. Cantillon has essentially the praxeological methodology. He's got the methodology of abstract reasoning. He starts off with a rule of one landlord. In other words, one landlord owns the whole country. The theory of utility, the value of essentially utility theory, he's also the first person The theory of money is magnificent. It has a whole human theory except for the process analysis.

1:06And it was not equilibrium. In other words, it was the process-political equilibrium. In British classical economics, you have different equilibrium states. You have this state and that state, and you leap somehow magically from one to the other. The process towards new equilibrium. For example, when Catalan talks about what happens when the money supply increases in a country, it's very Misesian, so to speak, pre-Misesian. First people get it, they get the new money, they spend more, prices go up as they spend it, and the goods that they buy, then it circulates to other people, you have sort of a rippling out effect, and each group gets it until finally you have, say, if you double the money supply, And finally you wind up with prices more or less doubled, but not completely, because you have a different equilibrium there, you have different life effects, etc.

1:56And it's a very sophisticated, excellent analysis of internationally so-called Hume's species flow analysis, so Catalan is much better than Hume. Hume was writing about the same time, a little bit later. Actually, no, this is, say, 1730s, and Hume wrote in 1750s. Hume might probably have read it, and all these guys knew each other, the British knew the French stuff. So with Catalan you have a pre-Austrian analysis, no question about it.

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The History of Economic Thought

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Speakers: Murray N. Rothbard.

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Murray N. Rothbard delivered it, in the series The History of Economic Thought.
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It is lecture 4 of 15 in The History of Economic Thought, which is free to stream or download in full.