Famous Irishman and bishop of the Church of England, after whom a town on the San Francisco bay was named after. George Berkeley was a prominent empiricist philosopher who laid out his famous idealist epistemology in his youthful Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710). He conflated Locke's primary and secondary qualities into mere "ideas" thus reduced all human knowledge into mental interpretations. It was by radicalizing Berkeley's philosophy that David Hume made his stunning debut into intellectual history. It is to Berkeley whom we owe that tiresome question of the existence of the tree falling unobserved in the forest (or the Oxford ditty of the "tree in the Quad").
In political economy, Berkeley was a thorough pessimist - perhaps explained by the miserable economic state of the Ireland around him. He turned his pen to argue for government (and Church) intervention in creating the "social climate" for economic development in Ireland (a true empiricist always confuses cause and effect!). He made Law's doctrine that "easy money is the engine of trade" central to his policy conclusions, basing this on his argument that money was effectively only a "ticket" for a credit transaction (presaging the ideas of Boisguilbert, Steuart and, much later, H.D. Macleod). His economics are perhaps best found in his Querist (1737). Berkeley was also a vociferous opponent of Mandeville - writing two famous pieces (1732, 1736) condeming his Fable.
Major Works of George Berkeley
Resources on George Berkeley