The essay “Buddhist Economics” was first published in Asia: A Handbook, edited by Guy Wint, published by Anthony Blond Ltd., London, 1966. John Papworth reprinted it in the January-February, 1968 (Vol. I, No 11) issue of Resurgence magazine published in England. On August 13, 1969, Henry Geiger gave the essay its first North American printing in his now classic newsletter MANAS (Vol. XXII, No. 33). In 1973 it was collected with other essays by Ernest Friedrich Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, published by Blond and Briggs, Ltd. In 1974 Harper and Row (now HarperCollins) printed a North American edition, which has been in print ever since. The book went on to be translated into 27 different languages and in 1995 was named by the London Times Literary Supplement as one of the hundred most influential books written after World War II.
Following the events of September 11, 2001, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics received requests from around the world to reprint “Buddhist Economics,” Fritz Schumacher’s classic essay, which is widely understood as a call for an economics of peace. Mrs. Vreni Schumacher, who holds the copyright to her late husband’s works, kindly extended permission to the Schumacher Center to make the essay available electronically along with its multiple translations.
Since then Schumacher Center’s staff has worked with translators and publishers to gather material to add to this online collection. “Buddhist Economics” is included below in its multiple translations in recognition of the universality of its vision.