[3] He was also closely involved in the development of the École spéciale de commerce et d'industrie (ESCP), historically the first business school to be established.

His father Jean-Etienne Say was born to a Protestant family which had moved from Nîmes to Geneva for some time in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

During the latter period, he was employed successively by two London-based firms of sugar merchants, James Baillie & Co and Samuel and William Hibbert.

In 1793, he assumed in keeping with French Revolutionary fashion the pseudonym Atticus and became secretary to Étienne Clavière, the then finance minister.

[4] From 1794 to 1800, he edited a periodical, entitled La Decade philosophique, litteraire, et politique, in which he expounded the doctrines of Adam Smith.

He turned to industrial activities and after having familiarised himself with the processes of cotton manufacture he established a spinning-mill at Auchy-lès-Hesdin in the Pas de Calais which employed some 400–500 people, mainly women and children.

In 1814, Say availed himself (to use his own words) of the relative liberty arising from the entrance of the allied powers into France to bring out a second edition of the work dedicated to the emperor Alexander I of Russia, who had professed himself his pupil.

Some economists, including some advocates of Say's law who dispute this characterization as a misrepresentation,[7] have disputed his interpretation, claiming that Say's law can actually be summarized more accurately as "production precedes consumption" and that Say was claiming that in order to consume one must produce something of value so that one can trade this (either in the form of money or barter) in order to consume later.

[10]Say also wrote that it is not the abundance of money, but the abundance of other products in general that facilitates sales:[11] Money performs but a momentary function in this double exchange; and when the transaction is finally closed, it will always be found, that one kind of commodity has been exchanged for another.Say's law may also have been culled from Ecclesiastes 5:11 – "When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?"

[12] Say's law emerged during the early period of the Industrial Revolution, at a time when the economic phenomena of increased output merged with England's cyclical inability to maintain both sales and unemployment.

Say's law of markets deals with the fact that production of commodities causes income to be paid to suppliers of the components of capital, labor, and land used in producing these goods and services.

Empirical methods Prescriptive and policy In the Treatise, his main economic work, Say stated that any production process required effort, knowledge and the "application" of the entrepreneur.

However, Say stated: [In any enterprise activity] there is an abundance of obstacles to be surmounted, of anxieties to be repressed, of misfortunes to be repaired, and of expedients to be devised [...] [and] there is always a degree of risk attending such undertakings.