ABSTRACT
Thomas Mun is the best-known and most respected member of a group of seventeenth-century British merchant—economists called “the mercantilists.” This group proposed that England run trade surpluses in order to accumulate gold and prosper economically. As set forth by Mun ([1664] 1954,p. 125),
The ordinary means … to increase our wealth and treasure is by Forraign Trade, wherein wee must Ever observe this rule; to sell more to strangers yearly than wee consume of theirs in value. … [T]hat part of our stock which is not returned to us in wares must necessarily be brought home in treasure.
