An Essay on Economic Theory

Widely credited with being the first to describe the market process as one driven by entrepreneurship, Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général preceded Adam Smith by a generation. Unlike any previous writer, Cantillon explicated the vital role of the entrepreneur with perception and vigor.

William Stanley Jevons, in the first blush of discovery, proclaimed Cantillon’s Essai, “the cradle of political economy.”

And Murray Rothbard called Cantillon the “founding father of modern economics.”