History of Economic Thought - Early Economic Thought

Early Economic Thought

The earliest discussions of economics date back to ancient times (e.g. Chanakya's Arthashastra or Xenophon's Oeconomicus). Back then, and until the industrial revolution, economics was not a separate discipline but part of philosophy. In Ancient Athens, a slave based society but also one developing an embryonic model of democracy, Plato's book The Republic contained references to specialization of labour and production. But it was his pupil Aristotle that made some of the most familiar arguments, still in economic discourse today.

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