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Article: Economics
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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ECONOMICS
General Characteristics
Economics studies human welfare in terms of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. While there is a considerable body of ancient and medieval thought on economic questions, the discipline of political economy onl
y took shape in the early modern period. Some prominent schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were Cameralism (Germany), Mercantilism (Britain), and Physiocracy (France). Classical political economy, launched by Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations
(1776), dominated the discipline for more than one hundred years. American economics drew on all of these sources, but it did not forge its own identity until the ...