Bernard Mandeville

Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) was a Dutch-English physician, philosopher, and political economist, whose best known work is The Fable of the Bees. Originally a poem in 1705 that eventually became a treatise by 1714, The Fable of the Bees suggested many key economic principles, including the division of labor, productivity, and the “invisible hand,” decades before the publication of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.