Joseph Massie

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Joseph Massie (?-1782) was an eighteenth century political economist who wrote about fifteen pamphlets dealing with economic and financial questions. Although he was probably less important than writers such as James Denham-Steuart or Josiah Tucker, he contributed to the birth of political economics before Adam Smith.

Like most of the political economists writing in the eighteenth century (and in opposition to those writing in the seventeenth century), he was not engaged in economic activity. He was indeed a writer and antiquarian, owning more than 1,500 economic treatises, extending from 1557 to 1763. He used this collection, together with contemporary trade statistics, to write some fifteen pamphlets on various questions such as urbanism, commerce, finances (and especially the problem of the public debt during the Seven Year War.)

You can have access to the list of Massie's pamphlets on the English Short Title Catalogue of the British Library.

And if you want to know more about eighteenth-century economical writers before Adam Smith, you can read "Managing the Great Machine of Trade", in KOEHN (Nancy F.), The Power of Commerce, London and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.