---
title: "History of economic thought"
chunk: 1/18
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:30.681827+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The history of economic thought is the study of the philosophies of the different thinkers and theories in the subjects that later became political economy and economics, from the ancient world to the present day.
This field encompasses many disparate schools of economic thought. Ancient Greek writers such as the philosopher Aristotle examined ideas about the art of wealth acquisition, and questioned whether property is best left in private or public hands. In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas argued that it was a moral obligation of businesses to sell goods at a just price.
In the Western world, economics was not a separate discipline, but part of philosophy until the 18th–19th century Industrial Revolution and the 19th century Great Divergence, which accelerated economic growth.

== Ancient economic thought (before 500 AD) ==

=== Ancient Greece ===
Hesiod active 750 to 650 BC, a Boeotian who wrote the earliest known work concerning the basic
origins of economic thought, contemporary with Homer. Of the 828 verses in his poem Works and Days, the first 383 centered on the fundamental economic problem of scarce resources for the pursuit of numerous and abundant human ends and desires.

=== China ===
Fan Li (also known as Tao Zhu Gong) (born 517 BCE), an adviser to King Goujian of Yue, wrote on economic issues and developed a set of "golden" business rules. Discourses on Salt and Iron in 81 BCE was one of the first recorded debates of state intervention and laissez faire.

=== Ancient India ===
Hindu texts Vedas (1700–1100 BC) contain economic ideas but Atharvaveda (1200 BC) is most vocal about such ideas.
Chanakya (born 350 BC) of the Maurya Empire, authored the Arthashastra along with several Indian sages, a treatise on statecraft, economic policy and military strategy.
The Arthashastra posits the theory that there are four necessary fields of knowledge: the Vedas, the Anvikshaki (philosophy of Samkhya, Yoga and Lokayata), the science of government, and the science of economics (Varta of agriculture, cattle, and trade). It is from these four that all other knowledge, wealth, and human prosperity is derived.

=== Greco-Roman world ===

Ancient Athens, an advanced city-state civilisation and progressive society, developed an embryonic model of democracy.
Xenophon's (c. 430–354 BC) Oeconomicus (c. 360 BC) is a dialogue principally about household management and agriculture.
Plato's dialogue The Republic (c. 380–360 BC) describing an ideal city-state run by philosopher-kings contained references to specialization of labor and to production. According to Joseph Schumpeter, Plato was the first known advocate of a credit theory of money that is, money as a unit of account for debt. Plato also argued that collective ownership was necessary to promote common pursuit of the common interest, and to avoid the social divisiveness that would occur "when some grieve exceedingly and others rejoice at the same happenings."
Aristotle's Politics (c. 350 BC) analyzed different forms of the state (monarchy, aristocracy, constitutional government, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy) as a critique of Plato's model of rule by philosopher-kings. Of particular interest for economists, Plato provided a blueprint of a society based on common ownership of resources. Aristotle viewed this model as an oligarchical anathema. Though Aristotle did certainly advocate holding many things in common, he argued that not everything could be, simply because of the "wickedness of human nature".
"It is clearly better that property should be private", wrote Aristotle, "but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition." In Politics Book I, Aristotle discusses the general nature of households and market exchanges. For him there is a certain "art of acquisition" or "wealth-getting", which is necessary and honourable for one's household, while exchange on the retail trade for simply accumulation is "justly censured, for it is dishonorable". Writing of the people, Aristotle stated that they as a whole thought acquisition of wealth (chrematistike) as being either the same as, or a principle of oikonomia ("household management" – oikonomos), with oikos meaning "house" and with (themis meaning "custom") nomos meaning "law". Aristotle himself highly disapproved of usury and cast scorn on making money through a monopoly.
Aristotle discarded Plato's credit theory of money for metallism, the theory that money derives its value from the purchasing power of the commodity upon which it is based:

Indeed, riches is assumed by many to be only a quantity of coin, because the arts of getting wealth and retail trade are concerned with coin. Others maintain that coined money is a mere sham, a thing not natural, but conventional only, because, if the users substitute another commodity for it, it is worthless, and because it is not useful as a means to any of the necessities of life, and, indeed, he who is rich in coin may often be in want of necessary food. But how can that be wealth of which a man may have a great abundance and yet perish with hunger, like Midas in the fable, whose insatiable prayer turned everything that was set before him into gold?.

== Middle Ages ==

=== Thomas Aquinas ===