The importance of this book, translated for the first time in 1983, lies not so much in List’s advocacy of the fiscal policy of protection as in the relatively new doctrines that he put forward. He discussed stages of economic growth, ‘productive powers’ and the industrialisation of developing regions. List’s most fundamental teachings are fully developed in this book.

In The National System of Political Economy, List provides a critique of the ideas of Adam Smith and David Ricardo that continues to resonate with policy makers concerned with industrial policy and national economic development. List argues that in contrast with the stylized view of classical economics, real-world economies are organized along national lines and that policy makers can ignore this reality to their peril. The benefits from trade are conditional, rather than universal and the development of sophisticated industry requires carefully designed and sequentially planned state interventions. List provides an early recognition of the existence of distinct stages of economic development, and of the interplay between military power, industrial development and national prosperity. List's work had a formative influence on contemporary strands of thought such as institutional economics and 'national systems of innovation' perspectives and is considered an exemplary of work in the tradition of realist international political economy.

One of the most prominent economic philosophers of the 19th century, on a par with-but espousing quite different thinking than-Karl Marx and Adam Smith explores, in the three-volume National System of Political Economy, a reasoned doctrine of national and pan-national management of trade, a global collaboration between government and business. Volume 1 examines the pronounced influence of freedom prudently balanced with regulation in the economic histories of the nations of Europe and North America. A close reading of this 1841 classic is an absolute necessity for anyone who hopes to understand world economic history of the last 150 years. German economist and journalist FRIEDRICH LIST (1789-1846) served as professor of administration and politics at the University of T bingen, but was later jailed and later exiled to America for his political views. His is also the author of Outlines of American Political Economy (1827).