Jean-Baptiste Say (January 5, 1767 – November 15, 1832) was a French
economist and businessman. He had classically liberal views and argued in favour of
competition, free trade and lifting restraints
on business. He created Say's law, which is often quoted incorrectly as "supply creates its
own demand".
Biography
Say was born in Lyon. His father, Jean-Etienne Etienne Say, was of Protestant family which had
moved from Nîmes to Geneva for some time in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Say was intended to follow a commercial career, and was sent, with his brother Horace,
to England: here he lived first in Croydon, in the house of a merchant, to whom he acted as
clerk, and afterwards in London, where he was in the service of another employer.
When, on the death of the latter, he returned to France, he was employed in the office of a life assurance company directed by
Étienne Clavière.
Say's first literary attempt was a pamphlet on the liberty of the press, published in 1789. He later worked under Mirabeau on
the Courrier de Provence. In 1792 he took part as a volunteer in the campaign of Champagne; in 1793 he assumed, in conformity
with the Revolutionary fashion, the pre-name of Atticus, and became secretary to Clavière, then finance minister.
In 1793 Say married Mlle Deloche, daughter of a former lawyer. From 1794 to 1800 Say edited a periodical entitled La Decade
philosophique, litteraire, et politique, in which he expounded the doctrines of Adam
Smith. He had by this time established his reputation as a publicist, and, when the consular government was established in
1799, he was selected as one of the hundred members of the tribunate, resigning the direction of
the Decade.
In 1800 he published in Olbie, ou essai sur les moyens de reformer les moeurs d'une
nation. In 1803 appeared Say's principal work, the Traité d'économie politique ou simple exposition de la manière dont se
forment, se distribuent et se composent les richesses. In 1804, having shown his unwillingness to sacrifice his convictions
for the purpose of furthering the designs of Napoleon, he was removed from the
office of tribune. He then turned to industrial pursuits, and, having made himself acquainted with the processes of the
cotton manufacture, founded at Auchy, in the Pas de Calais, a spinning-mill which employed four
or five hundred persons, principally women and children. He devoted his leisure to the improvement of his economic treatise,
which had for some time been out of print, but which the censorship did not permit him to republish.
In 1814 he "availed himself" (to use his own words) of the sort of liberty arising from the entrance of the allied powers into
France to bring out a second edition of the work, dedicated to the emperor Alexander I of
Russia, who had professed himself his pupil. In the same year the French government sent him to study the economic
condition of the United Kingdom. The results of his observations appeared in A tract
de l'Angleterre et des Anglais.
A third edition of the Traite appeared in 1817. A chair of industrial economy was founded for him in 1819 at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. In 1831 he was made professor of
political economy at the College de France. Say in 1828–1830 published his Cours
complet d'economie politique pratique.
In his later years Say became subject to attacks of nervous apoplexy. He lost his wife in
January 1830; and from that time his health constantly declined.
When the revolution of that year broke out, he was named a member of the council-general of the department of the Seine, but
found it necessary to resign.
He died in Paris on November 15, 1832.
Say's Law
He is well known for Say's Law (or Say's Law of Markets), often summarised as
Say's law says “the supply (sale) of X creates the demand (purchase) of Y”. This law can be shown by business-cycle
statistics. When downturns start, production is always first to decline, ahead of demand. When the economy recovers, production
recovers ahead of demand
He was also among the first to argue that money was neutral in its effect on the economy. Money is not desired for its own
sake, but for what it can purchase. An increase in the amount of money in circulation would increase the price of other goods in
terms of money (causing inflation), but would not change the relative prices of goods or the
quantity produced. This idea was later developed by economists into the Quantity
theory of money.
Say's ideas helped to inspire neoclassical economics which arose later in the
19th century.
As an interesting conjecture, Say's Law may have culled from Ecclesiastes 5:10 — "As goods increase, so do those who consume
them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them?" (NIV)
Major Works of Jean-Baptiste Say
- Olbie, ou essai sur le moyens de réformer les moeurs d'une nation, 1800.
- Traité d'économie politique, ou simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent, et se composent les
richesses, 1803 (Engl. translation: A Treatise on Political Economy, or the production, distribution and consumption of
wealth).
- De l'Angleterre et des Anglais, 1815.
- Cathechism of Political Economy, 1815. (French version)
- Petit volume contenant quelques aperçus des hommes et de la société, 1817.
- Des canaux de navigation dans l'état actuel de la France, 1818
- De l'importance du port de la Vilette, 1818
- Cours à l'Athénée de Paris, 1819.
- Lettres à M. Malthus sur différent sujets d'économie politique, notamment sur les causes de la stagnation générale du
commerce, 1820 (Engl. translation: "Letters to Thomas Robert Malthus on Political Economy and Stagnation of Commerce", The
Pamphleteer, 1821).
- "Sur la balance des consommations avec les productions", 1824, Revue Encyclopédique.
- "Examen Critique du discours de M. MacCulloch sur l'économie politique", 1825, Revue Encyclopédique.
- "De l'économie politique moderne, esquisse générale de cette science, de sa nomenclature, de son histoire et de sa
bibliographie", 1826, Encylopédie progressive.
- "De la crise commerciale", 1826, Revue Encyclopédique.
- "Compte rendu de Malthus "Definitions in Political Economy", 1827, Revue Encyclopédique
- "Discours d'ouverture au cours d'économie industrielle", 1828
- Cours complet d'économie politique pratique, 1828.
- Mélange et correspondence d'economie politique, 1833.
- Oeuvres diverses de J.-B. Say, 1848.
Quotes
On taxes:
"To encourage whale-hunting, the English government prohibits vegetable oils which we burn in France in draught-lamps. What
results from this? That one of these lamps, which costs a Frenchmen 60 francs per year, costs an Englishman 150 francs. The
intention, some say, is to support the navy and to multiply the number of sailors, that each lamp nozzle costs Englishmen 90 more
franks than in France. In this case, it is to multiply the number of sailors by the means of a trade that generates losses: it
would be better to multiply them by a lucrative trade."
"A hard working laborer, I was told, fancied working by candlelight. He had calculated that, during his vigil, he burned a
4-penny candle, earning 8 pennies by his work. A tax on tallows and another on the manufacture of the candles increased by 5
pennies the cost of his luminary, which became thus more expensive than the value of the product that it could shed light upon.
From then on, as soon as night fell, the workman remained idle; he lost the 4 pennies which his work could obtain him, and
without the tax service perceiving anything out of this production. Such a loss must be multiplied by the number of the workmen
in a city and by the number of the days of the year."
See also
Books on Say
Samuel Hollander - Jean-Baptiste Say and the Classical Canon in Economics: the
British Connection in French Classicism (London and New York: Routledge), 2005, xiii + 322, ISBN 0-415-32338-X
Thomas Sowell - Say's Law: An Historical Analysis (Princeton University Press), 1973,
254, ISBN 0-691-04166-0
External links
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
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