Most consider Scottish economist Adam Smith the progenitor of classical economic theory. However, Spanish scholastics and French physiocrats made earlier contributions. Other notable contributors to classical economics include David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, John Stuart Mill, Jean-Baptiste Say, and Eugen Böhm von Bawerk.

The main classical economists are Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Robert Malthus, and John Stuart Mill. The neoclassical model highlights supply and demand as the major determining factor behind producing and consuming goods and services.

Classical economics included, for example, the physiocrats, the English economist David Ricardo, and partly the Scottish economist Adam Smith; it excluded such authors as Thomas Robert Malthus and Jean-Baptiste Say, whom Marx considered “ vulgar economists ” dealing with “ appearances ” only.