Charles Dunoyer

Charles Dunoyer (Barthélemy-Charles-Pierre-Joseph Dunoyer de Segonzac, 20 May 1786, Carennac, Quercy (now in Lot) – 4 December 1862, Paris) was a French liberal economist.

Dunoyer gave one of the earliest theories of economic cycle, building on the theory of periodic crises of Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi, and introducing the notion of the economy periodically cycling between two phases.

Together with Charles Comte, in 1814, Dunoyer founded the journal Le Censeur, a platform for liberal ideas. Dunoyer would also publish a variety of books on political economy, among them De la Liberté du travail (1845, On the freedom of labour).

Dunoyer was a member of the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques of the Institut de France. He was also a member of the Conseil d'État of the Second Republic. While many know of the less than amiable relationship between Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon, there is much less knowledge of the more amiable twenty-five-year-long relationship between Auguste Comte and Charles Dunoyer. The latter relationship is discussed most fully by libertarian Leonard Liggio in "Charles Dunoyer and French Classical Liberalism".

In his dissertation in "book form" online, economist David Hart cites Liggio as the person who motivated him to focus on Charles Dunoyer and his partner, Charles Comte. Auguste Comte's intellectual biographer, Mary Pickering, also cites a review of Liggio's article when she too mentions this relationship. Dunoyer is also mentioned in the opening sentences of the entry on slavery by the Comtist, John Kells Ingram in both the ninth, or scholar's edition, of the Encyclopædia Britannica and the later eleventh edition as well. Although he is one of the over 550 "worthies" cited in Auguste Comte's Calendar of Great Men (1849), Dunoyer is primarily cited as a substitute for Adam Smith.

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