RICHARD CANTILLON P Entrepreneur and Economist

This is a study of Irish-born Richard Cantillon, eighteenth century banker and economist whose Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général (1755), was published twenty-one years after his death Cantillon's model building approach to macroeconomics, his analysis of the entrepreneur as the key agent in economic activity and his insightful discussion of monetary economics marked him out as one of the outstanding economists of the 18

Antoin E. Murphy was a Professor of Economics at Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin. He was a visiting scholar at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, the Institut d'Etude Demographiques in Paris, the Hoover Institution, and the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His special interests are in macroeconomics, monetary economics and the history of monetary thought. He was one of the joint managing editors of the European History of Economic Thought.

1. Introduction
2. Richard Cantillon's Background
3. Cantillon's Early Career
4. Cantillon's Debut as a Banker in Paris, 1714-17
5. John Law and Richard Cantillon: The First Mississippi Fortune-Phase One
6. Bernard Cantillon's Expedition to Louisiana, 1719
7. Lady Mary Herbert and Joseph Gage: Two of the Great Speculators of the Age
8. The Mississippi System-Phase Two
9. London and Amsterdam: The Great Crashes in these Cities in 1720
10. The Rich Mississippian and his Wife Mary Anne
11. Debt Collection and its Legal Consequences
12. The Strange Accusations of Christopher Balfe
13. The Writing and Contents of the Essai sur la nature du commerce en general
14. The Demise of Richard Cantillon
15. The Publication of the Essai in 1755
Concluding Note