Definition of "political economy" []

• The social science that deals with political science and economics as a unified subject; the study of the interrelationships between political and economic processes. (noun)
• The early science of economics through the 19th century. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Even those publications like the Examiner and Chronicle, which called it “the most pernicious treatise on political economy that has been published for many a day,” only served to enhance its fame."
• "This change of location was, even from the viewpoint of colonial policy and political economy an incomprehensible micarriage of justice towards the missionaries and the Indians alike, whose wishes had not been consultedin any manner; it was "one of the most tyrannical commands that was ever issued in the recklessness of unfeeling power""
• "Stanley Jevons wrote a treatise on political economy in which the struggle for existence was reduced to “a Calculus of Pleasure and Pain.”"