John Law: Economic Theorist and Policy-makerClarendon Press, 1997 - 391 pages John Law (1671-1729) left a remarkable legacy of economic concepts from a time when economic conceptualization was very much at an embryonic stage. Yet he is best known-and generally dismissed-today as a rake, duellist, and gambler. This intellectual biography offers a new approach to Law, one that shows him to have been a significant economic theorist with a vision that he attempted to implement as policy in early-eighteenth-century Europe. Law's style, marked by a clarity and use of modern terminology, stands out starkly against the turgid prose of many of his contemporaries. His vision of a monetary and financial system was certainly one of a later age, for Law believed in an economy of banknotes and credit where specie had no role to play. Ultimately Law failed as a policy-maker, in part because of the entrenchment of the financiers and their aristocratic backers and in part because of theoretical flaws in his vision. His struggle for power took place against the background of Europe's first major stock boom and collapse. The collapse of the Mississippi System, which he had conceived, and the South Sea Bubble led to a lasting impression of Law as a failure. It is this impression that Antoin Murphy seeks to dispel. |
Contents
Introduction I | 1 |
Laws Writings and his Critics | 8 |
Laws Background | 14 |
Duelling Beaux | 20 |
The Gambling Banker | 35 |
John Law the Economist | 45 |
The Edinburgh Environment in 1705 | 67 |
Money and Trade | 76 |
The Rise and Rise of the Mississippi Company 1719 | 188 |
A Specieless France 1720 | 213 |
The Lull before the Storm | 231 |
The Measures of 21 May 1720 | 244 |
Law the Improviser | 265 |
Requiem for the Banknote | 293 |
The Possibility of a Recall to France | 312 |
Death in Venice | 323 |
The Conceptualization of the System | 105 |
France 17141715 | 123 |
The Establishment of the General Bank | 149 |
The Establishment of the Company of the West | 164 |
The Slow Development of the System | 173 |
Notes | 335 |
Bibliography | 367 |
379 | |
381 | |
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Common terms and phrases
21 May arrêt AAE CP annuities Argenson August Balleroy bank accounts Bank of England banker banknotes Banque Banqueroute de Law billets d'état British capital cent circulation Conseil de Finance Controller-General Controller-General of Finances convert December demand Dubois duc de Bourbon East India Company economic Edgar Faure Essay establishment Euvres exchange export Faure favour France French gold and silver Harsin Histoire des finances holders Ibid increase issue John Law July June King land bank land money later Law's proposal Law's System letter London Louis louis-d'or Marais March Mémoire million livres Mississippi Company Mississippi shares Mississippi System monetary Money and Trade money supply Noailles Œuvres paper money Paris Pâris brothers Pâris-Duverney Parlement payments Poitiers profits quantity reduced Regent Royal Bank Scotland Scottish seems September share price shareholders silver money South Sea South Sea Company specie money stipulated tax farms tion Wilson wrote