Jacob Vanderlint, ?-1740?

18th Century liberal Neo-Mercantilist pamphleteer about whom virtually nothing is known, other than he was a timber merchant of Dutch extraction living in London.

Jacob Vanderlint developed a theory of international monetary equilibrium reminiscent of Sir Dudley North and Isaac Gervaise.  Vanderlint bases his arguments on the quantity theory of John Locke.  Vanderlint articulates a specie-flow mechanism to posit an international equilibrium with the equalization of prices across countries.  Countries with small gold stocks will have lower prices than countries with high gold stocks.  As a result, nations with scarcity of money will consequently export more and import less, and their trade surpluses will induce an inflow of specie (and consequently rising prices, eventually equating prices to those of other countries). 

Vanderlint acknowledges that increases in money supply can expand economic activity, but notes that bank credit (as in John Law's schemes) will simply raise prices and turn the balance of trade against a country. Vanderlint prefers to focus on means of increasing real production as the key to lower domestic costs, expanding  exports. To this effect, he believed in the enclosure of land, the reduction of land rents and recommended the elimination of all taxes on commodities, proposing to base public finance on a "single tax" on land.

Vanderlint was an advocate of free trade, proposing the elimination of trade barriers and tariffs, asserting countries would be better off by specializing in their (absolute) advantage.  But he maintains that an export surplus is desirable and should be a goal ("every nation ought to trade such foot as always on the whole to have the balance in their favour").  He just believes this can be better accomplished by competitive advantages rather than government regulations.

Vanderlint's analysis anticipates that of David Hume (indeed, to the point of some historians suggesting Hume may have simply copied Vanderlint - as almost alleged by Dugald Stewart).  His theory, and notably his "single tax", was influential on the Physiocrats..

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