La comptabilité des entreprises agricoles dans l'économie physiocratique

Résumé En

Bookkeeping in agricultural enterprises in physiocratic economics Since the eighteenth century, macroeconomic theories have developed in the course of an uninterrupted dialogue with microeconomic observation. This study attempts to examine the precise inquiries into the state of agriculture that the physiocrats used in elaborating and then verifying their Tableau économique The detailed information they gathered is contained in Philosophie rurale and Ephémérides du Citoyen . It seems that these economists were responsible for decisive advances in the way farmers kept their accounts; and these improvements were subsequently adopted by all agronomists. However, the circulation of wealth that they describe at the level of the kingdom as a whole departs from observed reality and attributes optimal proportions to the monetary exchanges between the various categories of actors involved. The examination of physiocratic microeconomics therefore allows us to distinguish between what pertains to the actual situation in the eighteenth century and what derives from the theoretical norm. This point of view may be profitable to both the historian and the student of epistemology.