威廉·配第

William Petty is an important figure in early British political economy, and Political Arithmetic is his representative work. Because public information is limited, details such as his dates of birth and death and his nationality are not available here. According to the materials in this database, his writing centers on finance and economics, and he habitually examines social and economic questions through numbers, statistics and comparison rather than abstract speculation. The very title Political Arithmetic reflects this orientation toward measuring national wealth, population and industry, and in the history of economics it is often regarded as a precursor to combining statistical methods with political economy. His style is practical and plain, stressing judgments supported by observable data, and it has inspired later work in economic statistics and quantitative analysis.