A principal promoter of the Societies' foundation was Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, a highly influential statesman and one of the most important thinkers in contemporary Spain.
In Spain the organizations are credited with some success in sponsoring economic activity, stimulating new industries, and publicizing recent advances in philosophy and science (most of which emanated from England, France and Germany).
Some of the groups in the Americas also strayed into activity that bordered on the political, and were punished by having their legal licenses revoked, which forced them to close, as happened repeatedly to the Society in Guatemala, for example.
The society led to the creation of Plan General Economico of Governor-General José Basco y Vargas, 1st Count of the Conquest of Batanes Islands, which implemented the monopolies on the areca nut, tobacco, spirited liquors and explosives.
Some of the societies published essays on new developments in agriculture, industry, and other fields; they often advocated for relaxation of Imperial mercantilist economic regulation, with occasional (though short-lived) success.
Members of the Economic Societies defied local censorship to bring in copies of Diderot's Encyclopédie, the works of Voltaire, Locke, and others (books often available in Spain itself), and shared them amongst their friends.
In both Spain and the colonies, the Sociedades Económicas were incubators for modern forms of socialization, in which people (mostly men) gathered publicly to discuss the issues of the day.