The phrase économie politique first appeared in France in 1615 with Antoine de Montchrétien's book Traité de l'economie politique. This work marked a shift from earlier Greek concepts of household management to state-level administration of wealth.
Antonio Genovesi became the first tenured professor at the University of Naples Federico II where the world's first professorship in political economy was established in 1754. The institution is located in southern Italy.
Citation measurement metrics from Google Ngram Viewer indicate that use of the term economics began to overshadow political economy around roughly 1910 becoming the preferred term for the discipline by 1920. Alfred Marshall published his influential textbook Principles of Economics in 1890 coinciding with this rise.
According to International Relations scholar Chris Brown Susan Strange was almost single-handedly responsible for creating international political economy as a field of study. She examined how various actors interact within global frameworks regarding economic impacts of international relations.
In 2010 the only Department of Political Economy in the United Kingdom was formally established at King's College London with rationale that disciplines of Politics and Economics are inextricably linked. This department focuses on the interaction between agents and economic and political institutions.