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Rare first edition, presenting "perhaps the most complete and magisterial account of the views of the Physiocratic school" (Higgs). "Quesnay collaborated very substantially in preparing this last major work, contributing the final chapter with further explanations and manipulations of his Tableau Économique analysis" (The New Palgrave). Schumpeter calls the work "the first of the four textbooks of physiocrat orthodoxy" (p. 225). It contains, for the first time, Quesnay's masterful explanation of his Tableau Économique, "one of those works in the history of economics which have often been regarded as an anticipation of modern theories" (Schumpeter, p. 242). Originally printed as a pamphlet of 16 pages in 1758 in a minute number of copies, Quesnay's Tableau Économique was first revealed to the public as the final part of Mirabeau's L'Ami des Hommes, in 1760. In the Philosophie rurale, Quesnay for the first time gives a full explanation of his system. The Tableau économique is credited as the "first precise formulation" of interdependent systems in economics and the origin of the theory of the multiplier in economics. An analogous table is used in the theory of money creation under fractional-reserve banking by relending of deposits, leading to the money multiplier. In a letter to Mirabeau written late in 1758 Quesnay remarks "J'ai taché de faire un tableau fondamental de l'ordre économique pour y représenter les dépenses et les produits sous un aspect facile à saisir et pour juger clairment des arrangemens et des dérangemens que le gouvernement peut y causer" (translated: "I have tried to make a fundamental table of the economic order in order to represent the expenses and the products in an aspect easy to grasp and to judge clearly of the arrangements and disturbances that the government can cause there"). "A most remarkable analysis of the economic condition of his country" (Palgrave), the Tableau économique "is the most important and famous work of Physiocracy and has often been regarded as a summary of the entire corpus of Physiocratic economics... ... The Tableau has also been regarded as the analytical synthesis of the logical structure of Quesnay's economics, or at least as its most relevant aspect... The Tableau économique is one of those works in the history of economics which have often been regarded as an anticipation of modern theories. The Tableau has been considered a first rough presentation of Keynes's multiplier and as a sort of general equilibrium system of a Walrasian type... For others, the Tableau is an input-output table... Because of the Tableau, Quesnay has been regarded as an early econometrician. The Tableau has also been interpreted as the first classical system of price determination, thus anticipating Marx's reproduction schemes and Sraffa's price system" (Giovanni Vaggi in The New Palgrave). READ MORE Quarto (260 x 192 mm). Contemporary quarter marbled sheep, orange paste paper sides, light blue endpapers. Housed in a black cloth flat-back box by the Chelsea Bindery. With 3 engraved plates, including the Tableau économique. Neatly restored at extremities, insect abrasion to spine, slight cockling to paste paper sides, contents clean and fresh. A very good copy. Goldsmiths' 9836; Higgs 2881; INED 3204; Kress 6120; Mattioli 2435.