ABSTRACT
The essence of “cosmopolitan economics”, according to Friedrich List (who coined the expression) consists of a series of beliefs whereby – to list just a few– “the way to give the economy the most powerful stimulus [is] to leave it alone.Agriculture and industrial production and commerce should be left to privateenterprise. Government intervention would only guide industry and capital intoless profitable channels… A government that wishes to increase nationalprosperity had only to free production and foreign trade from all restrictions”(List, 1983, p. 22). It is cosmopolitan economics in the sense that it assumes thatall sovereign countries – which Mother Nature has endowed differently –compete on an equal footing and should, therefore, for the sake of cultural andclimatic diversity, be free to interact and exchange products in a brotherlyfashion with one another, in the name of progress and increased total,international, welfare. The words of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill trulyincarnate and best exemplify the vision encapsulated in such thought. It is tothem that we now turn.
