Antoin E. Murphy was a Professor of Economics at Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin. He was a visiting scholar at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, the Institut d'Etude Demographiques in Paris, the Hoover Institution and the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His special interests are in macroeconomics, monetary economics, and the history of monetary thought. He was one of the joint managing editors of the European History of Economic Thought.

Dr Murphy deserves our gratitude for having now rescued two remarkable men in a remarkable century from undeserved obscurity.

• 1: Introduction 2: Law's Writing and his Critics 3: Law's Background 4: Duelling Beaux 5: The 'Gambling' Banker 6: Metamorphosis: John Law the Economist 7: The Edinburgh Environment in 1705 8: Money and Trade 9: The Conceptualization of the System 10: France 1714-1715 11: The Establishment of the General Bank 12: The Establishment of the Company of the West 13: The Slow Development of the System 14: The Rise and Rise of the Mississippi Company, 1719 15: A Specie-less France, 1720 16: The Lull before the Storm 17: The Measures of 21 May 1720 18: Law the Improviser 19: Requiem for the Banknote 20: The Possibility of a Recall to France 21: Death in Venice Notes Bibliography

Antoin E. Murphy was a Professor of Economics at Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin. He was a visiting scholar at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, the Institut d'Etude Demographiques in Paris, the Hoover Institution and the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His special interests are in macroeconomics, monetary economics, and the history of monetary thought. He was one of the joint managing editors of the European History of Economic Thought.

Dr Murphy deserves our gratitude for having now rescued two remarkable men in a remarkable century from undeserved obscurity.

• 1: Introduction 2: Law's Writing and his Critics 3: Law's Background 4: Duelling Beaux 5: The 'Gambling' Banker 6: Metamorphosis: John Law the Economist 7: The Edinburgh Environment in 1705 8: Money and Trade 9: The Conceptualization of the System 10: France 1714-1715 11: The Establishment of the General Bank 12: The Establishment of the Company of the West 13: The Slow Development of the System 14: The Rise and Rise of the Mississippi Company, 1719 15: A Specie-less France, 1720 16: The Lull before the Storm 17: The Measures of 21 May 1720 18: Law the Improviser 19: Requiem for the Banknote 20: The Possibility of a Recall to France 21: Death in Venice Notes Bibliography