Daniel Raymond was the first important political economist to appear in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.
He authored Thoughts on Political Economy (1820) and The Elements of Political Economy (1823).

Economic theory

He theorized that "labor creates wealth," which may have been an improvement based on the thinking of Adam Smith

Adam Smith

Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...

 of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. Daniel Raymond thought that the economy of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 was actually the economy of the higher-ranking members of that society, and not the economy of the entire nation. He held that wealth

Wealth

Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem...

 is not an aggregation of exchange value

Exchange value

In political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value refers to one of four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market...

s, as Adam Smith

Adam Smith

Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...

 had conceived it. Daniel Raymond held that wealth is the capacity or opportunity to acquire the necessaries and conveniences of life by labor.

Raymond systematized the infant industry argument

Infant industry argument

The Infant industry argument is an economic rationale for trade protectionism. The core of the argument is that nascent industries often do not have the economies of scale that their older competitors from other countries may have, and thus need to be protected until they can attain similar...

.

Political theory

In 1845, he wrote a book entitle 'The Elements of Constitutional Law' which included basic definitions of a government, a sovereign state

Sovereign state

A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...

, a confederacy and a constitution

Constitution

A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...

. While these concepts have evolved, much of the basic theories which he outlined still have relevance in modern political analysis.

His writings affected the political developments in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.