Although the political arithmeticians
were primarily and understandably preoccupied with statistical measurement
of economic phenomena, the work of Petty, and that of King in particular, represented
perhaps the first examples of a unified quantitative/theoretical approach to economics.
Indeed Schumpeter in his History of Economic Analysis (1954) goes as far as to say that
the works of the political arithmeticians ‘illustrate to perfection, what Econometrics is
and what Econometricians are trying to do’ (p. 209).