Jean Lescure's two-volume General and Periodic Crises of Overproduction is a pioneering study of the causes and consequences of industrial crises in capitalist economies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author, who held doctorates in political economy and law, is most remembered as a founder of the French historical school and a staunch advocate of empiricism in the economic sciences. Lescure called his approach the 'complex historical method', by which he sought to revise classical and quantitative economic theory through the historical analysis and statistical observation of cyclical phenomena. Lescure wrote in an engaging style, accessible to non-specialists and economists alike, and critiqued the leading monetary theorists of the period, insisting that observation of the movements in production costs, industrial orders and profits be given priority over circulation and credit in understanding the periodic crises of capitalist economies. In Lescure's view, crises were inevitable in both market and command economies and their onset and consequences were predictable with the help of the more detailed production statistics newly available to economists and entrepreneurs at the time. Lescure, unlike many of the liberal economists of the time, was always careful to include in his historical account statistical analysis of unemployment figures, as well as those on crime, marriage and birth rates, homelessness and suicide. Although he remained skeptical of government intervention, Lescure admitted the state's role in the recovery of the 1930s, when social insurance schemes and investment in public works mitigated the worst effects of unemployment for industrial labour.

This volume introduces two unique and hitherto largely unknown contributions to the making of modern economic knowledge, and makes them available internationally for the first time in full English translation. Written in 1597 Barthelemy de Laffemas' General regulation for the establishment of manufacturers (originally in French: Reiglement général pour dresser les manufactures) is one of the earliest voices in the history of political economy emphasising the necessity of manufacturing and large-scale industry as the source of the wealth of nations. Located somewhat at the cross-roads between medieval Scholasticism and early mercantilism presents a basic version of the infant industry argument and European standard model of economic development which made it into later doctrines of thought including Enlightenment thinkers such as Colbert, Sir James Steuart or Friedrich List and nineteenth and twentieth century neomercantilism.

Leonhard Fronsperger's On the praise of self-interest (German original: Von dem Lob deß Eigen Nutzen, 1564) is the first documented instance of the 'Mandeville paradox', a theorem in modern economics usually associated with much later writings including Bernard de Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1705/14), or Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and Wealth of Nations (1776). Vested in Renaissance Humanism southern German military surgeon and polymath Fronsperger argues - without moving into the abstractions of neoliberalism - that possessive individualism and self-interest are key forces moving the human economy forward, contributing to virtuous cycles of enrichment and economic development.