MUN, THOMAS

(baptized June 17, 1571, London, Eng.d. c. July 21, 1641), English writer on economics who gave the first clear and vigorous statement of the theory of the balance of trade. Mun came into public prominence during the economic depression of 1620. Many people held the East India Company responsible for this economic dislocation because the company exported 30,000 in bullion on each voyage to finance its trade. Although the royal charter stipulated that the company had to import an equal amount of bullion within six months, it was charged that the company imported Indian goods valued in excess of British exports to the Indies. In A Discourse of Trade, from England unto the East Indies (1621), Mun argued that so long as England's total exports exceeded its total imports, the export of bullion was not harmful. He pointed out that the money earned on the sale of reexported East Indian goods was in excess of the amount of originally exported bullion with which those goods were purchased. He was a member of the committee of the East India Company and of the standing commission on trade, appointed in 1622. Mun developed these ideas in his most important work, England's Treasure by Forraign Trade, published posthumously in 1664.