Jean-Baptiste Say

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Jean-Baptiste Say (5. January 1767 – 15. November 1832) was a French economist and businessman. He realized that economics is not about the amassing of data, but rather about the verbal elucidation of universal facts (for example, wants are unlimited, means are scarce) and their logical implications.

Say discovered the productivity theory of resource pricing, the role of capital in the division of labor, and "Say's Law": there can never be sustained "overproduction" or "underconsumption" on the free market if prices are allowed to adjust. He was a defender of laissez-faire and the industrial revolution.

Links

Author page and works at the Liberty Archive
J.B. Say: The Forgotten Early Austrian by Larry Sechrest.
Literature of J.B. Say
A Note On Jean-Baptiste Say and Carl Menger Regarding Value (pdf) by Kenneth K. Sanders, 1994
Jean-Baptiste Say, The Father of Austrian Public Finance: Views on Taxation (pdf) by Mark Brandly, 2007
Was Jean-Baptiste Say a Market Anarchist? by Amadeus Gabriel, March 2007
The Influence of Say's Traité by Murray N. Rothbard (from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought), 1995
Jean-Baptiste Say at Wikipedia