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International audience ; For mercantilism, the main objective of economic action is to increase the power of the Prince (Machiavelli). With the rise of capitalism and the market economy, liberal economists strongly criticized state management of the national economy. The centralization of political power was often seen as a major brake on the market economy and thus on economic development. Since 1990, the history of capitalism seems to have stopped being written within national borders. We are moving from the wealth of nations to the wealth of the world. However, despite the existence of the World Trade Organization, there is in fact no supranational authority capable of imposing rules on multinational markets, which are often speculative and interested mainly in short-term profit, thus threatening the sovereignty of nations. Yet market system generalization is often perceived as a factor of democracy. This statement is debatable. As states have lost most of their economic power, the electorate is the victim of a democratic illusion comparable to Keynes' monetary illusion. The risk is the progressive establishment of international plutocratic systems which, within each state, will defend private interests, sometimes in competition from state to state. War and economic war are not over. ; Pour le mercantilisme, l'objectif principal de l'action économique est d'accroître le pouvoir du Prince (Machiavel). Avec l'essor du capitalisme et de l'économie de marché, les économistes libéraux ont fortement critiqué la gestion étatique de l'économie nationale. La centralisation du pouvoir politique était souvent considérée comme un frein majeur à l'économie de marché et donc au développement économique. Depuis 1990, l'histoire du capitalisme semble avoir cessé de s'écrire à l'intérieur des frontières nationales. On passe de la richesse des nations à la richesse du monde. Cependant, malgré l'existence de l'Organisation mondiale du commerce, il n'existe en fait aucune autoritésupranationale capable d'imposer des règles aux ...

International audience ; For mercantilism, the main objective of economic action is to increase the power of the Prince (Machiavelli). With the rise of capitalism and the market economy, liberal economists strongly criticized state management of the national economy. The centralization of political power was often seen as a major brake on the market economy and thus on economic development. Since 1990, the history of capitalism seems to have stopped being written within national borders. We are moving from the wealth of nations to the wealth of the world. However, despite the existence of the World Trade Organization, there is in fact no supranational authority capable of imposing rules on multinational markets, which are often speculative and interested mainly in short-term profit, thus threatening the sovereignty of nations. Yet market system generalization is often perceived as a factor of democracy. This statement is debatable. As states have lost most of their economic power, the electorate is the victim of a democratic illusion comparable to Keynes' monetary illusion. The risk is the progressive establishment of international plutocratic systems which, within each state, will defend private interests, sometimes in competition from state to state. War and economic war are not over. ; Pour le mercantilisme, l'objectif principal de l'action économique est d'accroître le pouvoir du Prince (Machiavel). Avec l'essor du capitalisme et de l'économie de marché, les économistes libéraux ont fortement critiqué la gestion étatique de l'économie nationale. La centralisation du pouvoir politique était souvent considérée comme un frein majeur à l'économie de marché et donc au développement économique. Depuis 1990, l'histoire du capitalisme semble avoir cessé de s'écrire à l'intérieur des frontières nationales. On passe de la richesse des nations à la richesse du monde. Cependant, malgré l'existence de l'Organisation mondiale du commerce, il n'existe en fait aucune autoritésupranationale capable d'imposer des règles aux ...

International audience ; For mercantilism, the main objective of economic action is to increase the power of the Prince (Machiavelli). With the rise of capitalism and the market economy, liberal economists strongly criticized state management of the national economy. The centralization of political power was often seen as a major brake on the market economy and thus on economic development. Since 1990, the history of capitalism seems to have stopped being written within national borders. We are moving from the wealth of nations to the wealth of the world. However, despite the existence of the World Trade Organization, there is in fact no supranational authority capable of imposing rules on multinational markets, which are often speculative and interested mainly in short-term profit, thus threatening the sovereignty of nations. Yet market system generalization is often perceived as a factor of democracy. This statement is debatable. As states have lost most of their economic power, the electorate is the victim of a democratic illusion comparable to Keynes' monetary illusion. The risk is the progressive establishment of international plutocratic systems which, within each state, will defend private interests, sometimes in competition from state to state. War and economic war are not over. ; Pour le mercantilisme, l'objectif principal de l'action économique est d'accroître le pouvoir du Prince (Machiavel). Avec l'essor du capitalisme et de l'économie de marché, les économistes libéraux ont fortement critiqué la gestion étatique de l'économie nationale. La centralisation du pouvoir politique était souvent considérée comme un frein majeur à l'économie de marché et donc au développement économique. Depuis 1990, l'histoire du capitalisme semble avoir cessé de s'écrire à l'intérieur des frontières nationales. On passe de la richesse des nations à la richesse du monde. Cependant, malgré l'existence de l'Organisation mondiale du commerce, il n'existe en fait aucune autoritésupranationale capable d'imposer des règles aux ...

Since the days of Adam Smith, Mercantilism has been a hotly debated issue. Condemned at the end of the 18th century as a "false" system of economic thinking and political practice, it has returned paradoxically to the forefront in regard to issues such as the creation of economic growth in developing countries. This concept is often used in order to depict economic thinking and economic policy in early modern Europe; its meaning and content has been highly debated for over two hundred years. Following on from his 1994 volume Mercantilism - The Shaping of an Economic Language, this new book from Lars Magnusson presents a more synthetic interpretation of Mercantilism not only as a theoretical system, but also as a system of political economy. This book incorporates samples of material from the 1994 publication alongside new material, ordered in a new set of chapters and up-date discussions on mercantilism up to the present day. Tracing the development of a particular political economy of Mercantilism in a period of nascent state making in Western and Continental Europe from the 16th to the 18th century, the book describes how European rulers regarded foreign trade and industrialisation as a means to achieve power and influence amidst international competition over trades and markets. Returning to debates concerning whether Mercantilism was a system of power or of wealth, Magnusson argues that it is in fact was both, and that contemporaries almost without exception saw these goals as interconnected. He also emphasises that Mercantilism was an all-European issue in a time of trade wars and the struggle for international power and recognition. In examining these issues, this book offers an unrivalled modern synthesis of Mercantilist ideas and practices

It has become common to note the failure of neoclassical economics to explain economic divergence between countries and regions. In recent years this has frequently been attributed to some countries developing or capturing industries with increasing returns; i.e. that the agglomeration effects typical of increasing returns industries are sensitive to slight differences in initial conditions that over time lead to further agglomeration and thus increasing divergence rather than convergence between regions and countries (Romer 1986, Krugman and Venables 1995, Fujita and Thisse 2002). Just as the lack of short-term convergence among modern economies can be attributed to the capturing of increasing returns-to-scale activities, many believe Europe (and its settler colonies) did this on a long-term, global scale as well, in a global division of labor at the state and regional level. In the economic history literature this process is sometimes explained in other language, i.e., that Europe deindustrialized its colonies e.g., in dependency theory in general, and works such as Amin 1976, Forbes and Rimmer 1984, and Alam 2000. This long-term, increasing returns perspective is interesting because it can be seen as (regarding reasons proposed for the 'great divergence' in levels of development that economic historians now tell us happened mainly in the last few centuries2) merging or at least compatible with both many recent mainstream economic observations related to regional economics, agglomeration, and increasing returns-to-scale activities ('new' trade theory) and aspects of important heterodox arguments (Marxist/dependency theories, some Austrian economics, and much evolutionary economics - related to competition, for example). How, then, did European states rise in the international division of labor?...

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in Cameralism, both as a discourse and as an administrative political economy, in both theory and practice. Attention has been drawn to how Cameralism—defined as thought and practice—should be understood. The aim of this article is to take a step back and focus on the historiography of Cameralism from the nineteenth century onwards. Even though many in recent times have challenged old and seemingly dated conceptualizations and interpretations, they are still very much alive. Most profoundly this has implied that Cameralism most often in the past has been acknowledged as an expression of—German. as it were—exceptionalism to the general history of economic doctrine and thinking.