[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctc/serie6/itemq1264.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Poverty and Subsistence. The Mercantilist Point of View

Author

Listed:
  • Cosma Orsi

    (DISCE,Università Cattolica)

Abstract
The aim of this article is to look at ideas of social welfare in the English political economy from the 16th to the early 18th Century. In doing so, we shall focus upon the relationship between English Mercantilist economic thought and the evolution of the institutional framework established in order to cope with the problem of poverty and unemployment. In other words, rather than viewing Mercantilism as an “exercise in economic nationalism” we shall inquiry it under the perspective of social policy. Although the most credited assessments of Mercantilism have depicted it as a doctrine which supported a “ruthlessly materialistic ruling class which did not merely neglect but actively exploited the poor”, by placing the emphasis on the role played by the allowance system in the overall strategy of poor relief in England throughout the 17th Century we shall see that during the Mercantilist period social policies were not neglectful of the need of the poor. This reinforced the idea of a social Mercantilism.

Suggested Citation

  • Cosma Orsi, 2012. "Poverty and Subsistence. The Mercantilist Point of View," DISCE - Quaderni dell'Istituto di Teoria Economica e Metodi Quantitativi itemq1264, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    • Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie6:itemq1264
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://istituti.unicatt.it/teoria_economica_metodi_quantitativi_itemq1264.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mercantilism; Poverty; Unemployment; Allowances System;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B11 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Preclassical (Ancient, Medieval, Mercantilist, Physiocratic)

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ctc:serie6:itemq1264. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gianluca Femminis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dscatit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.