L'étude des mécanismes de la demande des biens de consommation est au centre de l'analyse de la conjoncture économique. C'est un objet socio-économique important en soi qui prend également place dans l'ensemble plus vaste de la formation des prix. Etape cruciale pour l'appréhension globale des mécanismes conjoncturels, elle présuppose du même coup des études antérieures (sur la nature de la formation sociale) ou parallèles (sur la fonction d'offre, la monnaie) qui ne peuvent être entreprises ici. L'approche historique traditionnelle de ce type de problèmes repose sur la méthode empirique qui consiste à lire les données statistiques.

This article studies demand for consumer products in a pre-industrial economy. This is done in two stages: firstly a certain number of hypotheses are presented and examined which should allow us to grasp the exchange mechanisms from which the principles of the functioning of demand are deduced. These deductions are then compared with statistical data comprising a large number of runs. This comparison brings to light a number of explanatory regularities which constitute a framework representing the functioning of certain aspects of the market. This paper has two goals: (1) to find results concerning the determination of prices and the amounts demanded as well as the cause of certain cyclical fluctuations, and (2) to propose a more analytic approach to this economic conjoncture which can complete the empirical investigation by elucidating problems which the latter was able to pose but not resolve.