How Business Started

The three essays are the result of my research into the origins of economic thought and entrepreneurship. In undertaking this work, I found out more about the role economic action - in which I have taken an active part since fifty ­years - plays in determining the prosperity of a society. I was moved by four questions, in particular:

- Why is property a necessity?

- Skills and emancipation of individuals

- Behaviour and organisation of groups

- How can socialism work?

Action should be influenced by ethical foundations of economics und business. Important principles include responsibility, efficiency and subsidiarity. Coupled with the principle of freedom and the pursuit of technical progress, their implementation can lead a competing community to great prosperity, which then helps to solve the social problem of underprivileged minorities through self-help.

The book begins by investigating the spiritual and economic conditions that paved the way for the industrial revolution in the High Middle Ages. The next section demonstrates that no wealth can be achieved without legal certainty. This is followed by an account of the agricultural region of Catalonia at the Mediterranean foot of the Pyrenees, which opened up to the world around the year 1000 and proceeded to gain a modest degree of prosperity. An economy that spanned Christianity and Islam shows signs of globalisation.