BAPTISTA, JOHN LEE R.

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List down all the important persons during the mercantilist, classical and neoclassical period and
their contributions.

Mercantilism
Thomas Mun, English writer on economics who gave the first clear and vigorous statement of
the theory of the balance of trade. Mun was one of the first mercantilists. In other words, he
believed that a nation’s holdings of gold are the main measure of its wealth and that governments
should regulate trade to produce an excess of exports over imports in order to gain more gold for
the country.
Antonio Serra. He was the first to analyze the general features of economic backwardness: lack
of manufactures, absence of a stable government which encourages export, investments and
trade; lack of entrepreneurial occasions; poorness of trade. Serra also - together with the Spanish
mercantilists - introduced for the first time the analysis of dependence, i.e. of the process that
makes a backward economy dependent on - and blocked by - the prevailing interests of stronger
economies.
Jean Baptiste Colbert believed in the Mercantilist doctrine that the expansion of commerce
(and the maintenance of a favorable balance of trade) was the key to State wealth.  His policies --
what became known as ‘Colbertisme’-- were all geared in this direction.  Colbert doted on his
charter companies, set up chambers of commerce, redirected capital to export and import-
substitution industries, set up a protective system of tariffs and duties, blocked foreigners from
trading in French colonies.
Classical Period
Adam Smith was so persistent on the promotion of free trade and reasoned that with these
efficiencies, people in both countries would benefit and trade should be encouraged. His theory
stated that a nation’s wealth shouldn’t be judged by how much gold and silver it had but rather
by the living standards of its people.
David Ricardo was a classical economist best known for his theory of comparative advantage.
The theory of comparative advantage, which argued that countries can benefit from international
trade by specializing in the production of goods for which they have a relatively lower
opportunity cost in production even if they do not have an absolute advantage in the production
of any particular good.

Thomas Robert Malthus was an 18th-century British philosopher and economist noted for the
Malthusian growth model, an exponential formula used to project population growth. The theory
states that food production will not be able to keep up with growth in the human population,
resulting in disease, famine, war, and calamity. A noted statistician and proponent of political
economy, Malthus founded the Statistical Society of London.
Neoclassical period
Alfred Marshall had come up with the Neoclassical theory of value of his own. Marshall had
already begun translating his economic thinking into diagrams and curves. He was working on a
treatise on foreign trade, in the process of which he introduced his famous supply-and-demand
diagram in the traditional inverted form me know it today.
Mihail Manoilescu a Romanian economist, he argued and proved with numerical examples that
free trade militated against the creation of a manufacturing sector on which the country‟s
prosperity depended, and advocated protection for that sector. In the world of economics,
Manoilescu is primarily remembered for the "Manoilescu argument", which states that when the
marginal productivity of labor in agriculture is lower than that in other sectors, surplus labor
should be redirected to higher-productivity activities, such as manufacturing.
Frank Graham an American economist, showed that a country with a comparative advantage in
an increasing cost industry may be hurt by trade when it shifts its resources from a decreasing
cost industry, whereas its trading partner that specializes in the latter undoubtedly gains. He
argued for the protection of decreasing cost or increasing return on industries.