Between Command and Market: Economic Thought and Practice in Early China

Ancient Chinese economic thought has never been related to the evidence of economic practice. We know how state economies were supposed to be run in theory, but not the degree to which economic thought reflected everyday economic activity. Moreover, it is still not clear to what extent economic thought constituted a separate field of inquiry and was independent of fundamental cultural notions or political considerations. Finally, why was there so much more sustained interest in political economy in China than anywhere else? This book sets out to consider such questions through contextualised analyses of both received and newly excavated sources on economic thought and practice.

Contributors are Paul R. Goldin, Yohei Kakinuma, Maxim Korolkov, Elisa Levi Sabattini, Andrew Meyer, Yuri Pines, Christian Schwermann, Hans van Ess, and Robin D.S. Yates

Elisa Levi Sabattini (Ph.D. Ca’ Foscari University at Venice and INALCO at Paris 2006), was Associate Professor of Chinese Philology at L’Orientale University of Naples and is now affiliated at the Frieberg Center for Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on intellectual history, Chinese thought and aesthetic practice of Early China. She is author of several articles and book chapters, both in English and Italian, published for international peer-reviewed journals. She is co-editor together with Paul R. Goldin of Lu Jia’s New Discourses: A Political Manifesto from the Early Han Dynasty (Brill, 2020).
Christian Schwermann, Ph.D. (2005), University of Bonn, is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany. His research interests include classical Chinese language and literature and early Chinese conceptual and political history.