ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: The biographical background to William Petty’s concept of a social surplus.
Author: Goodacre Hugh
Nothing divides different schools of economic thought so sharply as the concept of an economy-wide surplus product and its distribution among the various sections of society, yet nothing unites them like the apparently universal agreement that this concept was first explicitly formulated by the English writer William Petty in his Treatise of Taxes and Contributions published in 1662. In a recent article, Tony Aspromourgos has addressed the issue of how Petty was first drawn to the analysis of surplus production, aptly singling out for particular attention his involvement, some dozen-or-so years prior to the publication of the 1662 Treatise, in experimentation directed towards the improvement of agricultural technology. The present study further explores this question, with reference to a number of other strands in Petty’s educational, professional and career background which may also have contributed conceptual and linguistic resources for his formulation of the surplus concept.
Registred web users only can download this paper - Go back
Please note that files available for download have not been checked for viruses. These files have been submitted by authors of the conference to this web site. Conference organisers can't accept any responsibility for damages caused to users by downloading such files.