Profile Major Works Resources

Achylle-Nicolas Isnard, 1749-1803

 

Achylle-Nicolas Isnard was one of the first of a long string of French engineers who dedicated their spare time to economics.  Born in Paris, Isnard was a graduate of the  École des Ponts et Chaussées and worked as an engineer on roads and canals in the Besançon region.

Isnard was aware of the economic debates of the Enlightenment era and was particularly critical of the Physiocratic doctrine.  In his Traité des richesses (published anonymously in 1781), Isnard sought to show arithmetically that industry, and not only agriculture, could produce a produit net.  He also showed that the surplus accrues not to landlords as such, but to all owners of scarce factors of production.  More originally, Isnard addressed the determination of prices in an exchange economy.  He set the problem out mathematically in a multi-good scenario as a system of equations,  counting equations and unknowns, determining the numeraire, etc.  Isnard's work was highly influential upon Léon Walras.

Isnard's Traité was not well-received at the time - indeed he got upbraided by Jean-Rodolphe Peronnet, the director of the EPC, for not having sought permission to publish it.

At the outset of the 1789 Revolution, Isnard unwisely published a pro-monarchy pamphlet.  In spite of this, he was nonetheless appointed chief engineer in Lyons and participated in post-revolutionary politics and administration.  From December 1799 to March 1802, Isnard was a member of Napoleon's Tribunat, with special charge of public finances.  He died in Lyons in 1803.

 

  

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Major Works of Achylle-Nicolas Isnard

  • Traité des richesses, contenant l'analyse de l'usage des richesses en général & de leurs valeurs; les principes & les loix naturelles de la circulation des richesses, de leur distribution, du commerce, de la circulation des monnoies & de l'impôt, & des recherches historiques sur les révolutions que les droits de propriété publics & particuliers ont éprouvées en France depuis l'origine de la monarchie, 1781, v.1, v.2 [bnf: v.1, v.2] 
  • Catechisme Social, ou Instructions élémentaires sur la morale sociale à l'usage de la jeunesse, 1784. [bk]
  • Observations sur le principe qui a produit les révolutions de France, de Genève et d'Amerique au XVIIIe siècle, 1789. [bk]
  • Les Devoirs de la Deuxième Législature, 1791.
  • Considérations Théoriques sur les Caisses d'amortissement de la dette publique, 1801. [bk]

 
HET

 
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Resources on A.N. Isnard

  • "De l'utilité des routes et canaux navigables (extract from Traité ), including presentation of Bernard LePetit, 1989, Flux (Pers)
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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