Kautilya - The True Founder Of Economics

On January 10, 2013 – I posted a write up on “KAUTILYA's Principles of Taxation and ADAM SMITH's Canon of Taxation”. The post was left open as usual for reader’s opinion. This post is different. Kindly read further to know how different it is. Thanks.

Today when I went to library and browsed some book, where I found an interesting book titled “Kautilya - The True Founder Of Economics” by Prof. Balbir Singh Sihag. 

In the book (page no. 10-11) he had given a partial list of concepts used by Chanakya alias Kautilya in his book Arthashastra (4^th Century BCE). The list is as follows:

Genesis  of the Concepts in Arthashastra  during 4th Century BCE	Re-emergence of these concepts
	Authour	Year
Opportunity Cost	Wieser	1889
Demand and Supply Framework	Marshall	1870
Law of Diminishing Returns	Turgot	1766
Liquidity	Keynes	1936
‘All other things being equal’	D Bernoulli	1738
Marginal Analysis	Turgot	1766
Constrained Optimization	Walras, Slutsky	1874-77, 1915
Distinction between Short Run and Long Run	Marshall	1870
Moral Hazard	Adam Smith	1776
Linear Income Tax	Mirrless	1971
Public Goods	Lindahl, Samuelson	1919, 1954
Producer Surplus	Marshall	1870
Importance of Capital Formation	Adam Smith	1776
Theory of Gains from Trade	Ricardo	1817
Crime and Punishment	Becker	1968
Efficiency Wages	Marx, Solow	1867, 1979
Risk-return Trade-off	Markowitz	1952
Asymmetric Information	Akerlof	1970
Time Inconsistency Problem.	Kyland-Presscott	1977
Non-cooperative game	Waldegrave, Nash	1713, 1951
Contigency Planning	H Stein	1996

The authour also stated that "It may be noted that the above illustratively enumerated twenty-one concepts, used in modern economic analysis, were already used and applied in Kautilya's formulations. Adam smith has the credit for only two..."

Note: The book cost Rs. 650 in Indian Market. (as mentioned in the book cover and this info is for the readers who wish to buy)