A Study On The Economic Thoughts Of Ouyang Xiu

The economic thoughts of OuyangXiu , closely related to the real politics, are produced from the special history of the early Song Dynasty and have a big proportion of demand on malpractice reform.On the base of traditional thoughts of thinking highly of agriculture and according to the real condition of the North Song Dynasty, Ouyang Xiu produces a series of practical economic plans of land, water transport, taxes and corvee etc. In the same time, he breaks through the limit of "thinking highly of agriculture while little of commerce" of older generation and maintains openly that the country should have the common interest with traders and oppose prohibition. He revises the traditional thought of limiting commerce theoretically. On the problem of finance, he follows the principle of "budget according to income" and "save on finance to richen the people" and produces countermeasures against the malpractices in usury, taxes and corvee etc . On the problem of money and price, Ouyang Xiu recognizes the close relation between demand and supply of goods and price, which enriches and improves the price theory of the ancient economic thoughts.The economic thoughts of Ouyang Xiu, produced from the history and based on the reality, have important enlightening function to the trend of new thoughts even if they are not deep enough.