Political economy

Political economy – sometimes referred to as comparative economy – is an interdisciplinary field in political science and economics that studies the relationship between political and economic systems, including how they influence each other.

The field originated within the 16th-century Western moral philosophy, with theoretical works exploring the administration of states' wealth. The earliest works of political economy are usually attributed to the British scholars Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo, although the work of the French physiocrats preceded them. Various thinkers, from John Stuart Mill to Karl Marx, saw economics and politics as inseparable.

By the mid-18th century, political economy emerged as a distinct field, encompassing the study of phenomena that is now categorised under economics. In the late-19th century, economics had become an independent discipline separate from political economy with the rise of mathematical modeling, coinciding with the publication of the influential textbook Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall in 1890.

In its modern form, political economy is an interdisciplinary field analyzing phenomena such as labour markets, international trade, growth, the distribution of wealth, and economic inequality. In contrast, the term economics usually refers to the narrow study of the economy absent other political and social considerations.