From the Encyclopédie to the Tableau économique : Quesnay on freedom of grain trade and economic growth

This paper investigates the evolution of Quesnay's economic thought between his Encyclopédie articles and the first edition of the Tableau économique. The rediscovery of a forgotten piece Quesnay included in an agricultural treatise — the Essai sur l'amélioration des terres — leads us to reconsider the origins of the first edition of the Tableau. This forgotten piece of writing is the missing link between Quesnay's first economic writings and the Tableau. It improves on the theory of grain trade liberalization Quesnay presented in his first writings on two levels. First, it reconstructs of his previous argument in order to give it a more coherent shape. Second, this text complements the Encyclopédie articles by a growth mechanism. Through a reconstruction of Quesnay's growth mechanism, we show that his argument is a significant analytical step toward the first edition of the Tableau.