Jean-Baptiste Say - Work

Jean Baptiste Say was an advocate, like Smith, of free markets. In fact at one stage he even fell out with Napoleon (as did many others!) for promoting an extreme laissez-faire policy. Much of his work was based on the role of markets, and he is best known for his 'loi des débouchés'. If your French doesn't extend to this you may know it better as a 'law of markets' or more likely as Say's Law.

His main works are probably not very memorable, perhaps because they have French titles, but his work was very influential, perhaps even infamous. This fame may have derived from the fact that much of Keynes's criticism of Classical theory was directed at Say's view of market equilibrium. Say's main works were:

• Traité d'économie politique (1803)
• Cours complet d'économie politique pratique (1829)

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