scholarly journals Was adam smith an economic geographer?

GeoJournal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanos Ioannou ◽  
Dariusz Wójcik
Keyword(s):  
Economic Geography ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Home Bias ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Physical Geography ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Financial Centre ◽  
Financial Geography ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

AbstractEconomic geographers typically associate Adam Smith with the pin factory, the division of labour, and the ‘invisible hand’ of the market. We show that a closer reading of The Wealth of Nations reveals a much richer and broader range of ideas, which we illustrate by focusing on six themes: methodology, the role of physical geography and land in development, urban scale, institutions, commercial centres, and financial geography. On commercial centres, for example, Smith offers a vivid elaboration of what causes a ‘home bias’ in international trade. Similarly, in a largely neglected part of the book, Smith offers a thorough set of reflections as to what turned Amsterdam into the leading financial centre of Europe during the seventeenth century and eighteenth centuries. Overall, we argue that in all these themes and across them, Smith offers insights valuable to contemporary economic geography, making the Wealth of Nations worthy a place in an anthology of the discipline.

Adam Smith on the Philosophy and Provision of Education

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex M. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Education For All ◽  
Public Provision ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
The Public ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

This article examines the views of Adam Smith on the philosophy and provision of education. On the basis of his Theory of Moral Sentiments and other writings, it becomes clear that Smith views education, conceived broadly to include both the learning of ‘wisdom’ and ‘moral sentiments’, as central to a prosperous or flourishing society. Education, in Smith’s view, is not restricted to formal institutions of education but also includes social learning—that between parents and children, and the learning arising from friendships. For Smith, education is a social process. Smith also discusses the important role of wonder and surprise in the process of education. The provision of education, as outlined in his Wealth of Nations, largely supports the public provision of education with partial contributions from the enrolled students. Smith favoured education for all because he believed that it would offset the harmful effects of division of labour on the workers, and therefore, education had to be accessible to the workers. The essay concludes by reiterating Smith’s position that education for all is necessary to create a prosperous society. JEL: A20, B12, B31

Adam Smith

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schliesser
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Single Argument ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
The Impact

This book treats Adam Smith as a systematic philosopher. Smith was a giant of the Scottish Enlightenment with polymath interests. The book explores Smith’s economics and ethics in light of his other commitments on the nature of knowledge, the theory of emotions, the theory of mind, his account of language, the nature of causation, and his views on methodology. It places Smith’s ideas in the context of a host of other philosophers, especially David Hume, Rousseau, and Isaac Newton; it draws on the reception of Smith’s ideas by Sophie de Grouchy, Mary Wollstonecraft, and other philosophers and economists to sketch the elements of and the detailed connections within Smith’s system. The book traces out Smith’s system and puts it in the context of his highly developed views on the norms that govern responsible speech. In particular, the book articulates Smith’s concerns with the impact of his public policy recommendations, especially on the least powerful in society. In so doing, the book offers new interpretations of Smith’s views on the invisible hand, Wealth of Nations, his treatment of virtue, the nature of freedom, the individual’s relationship to society, his account of the passions, the moral roles of religion, and his treatment of the role of mathematics in economics. While the book offers a single argument, it is organized in modular fashion and includes a helpful index; readers with a more focused interest in Smith’s achievements can skip ahead to the section of interest.

scholarly journals HOW SHOULD WE RECONCILE SELF-REGARDING AND PRO-SOCIAL MOTIVATIONS? A RENAISSANCE OF “DAS ADAM SMITH PROBLEM”

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-102
Author(s):  
Natalie Gold
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Crowding Out ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Intrinsic Motivations ◽  
Social Motivations ◽  
Motivation Crowding ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Selfish Agents

Abstract“Das Adam Smith Problem” is the name given by eighteenth-century German scholars to the question of how to reconcile the role of self-interest in the Wealth of Nations with Smith’s advocacy of sympathy in Theory of Moral Sentiments. As the discipline of economics developed, it focused on the interaction of selfish agents, pursuing their private interests. However, behavioral economists have rediscovered the existence and importance of multiple motivations, and a new Das Adam Smith Problem has arisen, of how to accommodate self-regarding and pro-social motivations in a single system. This question is particularly important because of evidence of motivation crowding, where paying people can backfire, with payments achieving the opposite effects of those intended. Psychologists have proposed a mechanism for the crowding out of “intrinsic motivations” for doing a task, when payment is used to incentivize effort. However, they argue that pro-social motivations are different from these intrinsic motivations, implying that crowding out of pro-social motivations requires a different mechanism. In this essay I present an answer to the new Das Adam Smith problem, proposing a mechanism that can underpin the crowding out of both pro-social and intrinsic motivations, whereby motivations are prompted by frames and motivation crowding is underpinned by the crowding out of frames. I explore some of the implications of this mechanism for research and policy.

The Proper Context of Business

2019 ◽  
pp. 31-66
Author(s):  
James R. Otteson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Proper Context

Chapter 2 investigates the explanation Adam Smith gave in his famous Wealth of Nations (1776) for why some places are wealthier than others, and what political, economic, and other social institutions are required for increasing prosperity. The chapter discusses the conception of “justice,” as opposed to “beneficence,” that Smith offered The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), as well as Smith’s economizer, local knowledge, and invisible hand arguments from his Wealth of Nations that form the basis of his political economy. We look at the duties of government implied by Smithian political economy, including both what he argues government should do and what it should not do. We also look at empirical evidence to answer the question of whether Smith’s predictions on behalf of his recommendations have come true in the intervening centuries.

scholarly journals What’s the problem, Mr. Smith? Shedding more light (than Heat) on Adam Smith’s view of man *

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Emmanoel de Oliveira Boff
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

Abstract Why has the “Adam Smith Problem” recently been discussed in the literature? Although most historians of economic thought regard the problem solved, these discussions cast doubt on this apparent solution. This article suggests that the “Adam Smith Problem” may originate from the concept of the human being developed by Smith in the “Theory of Moral Sentiments”: in this book, human beings can be understood as composed of an empirical and a (quasi) transcendental side, in the form of the impartial spectator. It is argued that it is the tension between these two parts which creates supposed inconsistencies between aspects of the “Theory of Moral Sentiments” and the “Wealth of Nations” like, for example, the role of sympathy and self-interest in each of these books.

The Rhetoric of the Market: Adam Smith on Recognition, Speech, and Exchange

2001 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kalyvas ◽  
Ira Katznelson
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
Modern Analogue ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Social Esteem ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Institutional Foundations ◽  
Normative Role

We probe the connections linking the market, speech, and sympathy in the work of Adam Smith, stressing how individuals strive for social esteem and ethical credit while competing in markets. We demonstrate how Smith approached speech and rhetoric as constituting attributes of markets, the modern analogue of previous institutional foundations for social order. Thus, markets are not simply, or exclusively, arenas for the instrumental quest by competitive and strategic individuals to secure their material preferences. They are a central mechanism for social integration derived not from strategic self-interest but from the inexorable struggle by human agents for moral approbation. Part One retranslates the master concept ofMoral Sentimentsinto a modern theory of recognition. Part Two considers how Smith, in hisRhetoric, established the mutual constitution of recognition and speech. Part Three carries this understanding to hisJurisprudence, the most integrative of his texts, which relocates these impulses inside the market itself.The pivotal second chapter of Adam Smith'sWealth of Nations, “Of the Principle which gives occasion to the Division of Labour, ” opens with the oft-cited claim that the foundation of modern political economy is the human “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” This formulation plays both an analytical and normative role. It offers an anthropological microfoundation for Smith's understanding of how modern commercial societies function as social organizations, which, in turn, provide a venue for the expression and operation of these human proclivities.

The Equalizing Hand: Why Adam Smith Thought the Market Should Produce Wealth Without Steep Inequality

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1051-1070 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Boucoyannis
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Liberal Political Economy ◽  
Made In

That the market economy inevitably leads to inequality is widely accepted today, with disagreement confined to the desirability of redistributive action, its extent, and the role of government in the process. The canonical text of liberal political economy, Adam Smith'sWealth of Nations,is assumed even in the most progressive interpretations to accept inequality, rationalized as the inevitable trade-off for increasing prosperity compared to less developed but more equal economies. I argue instead that Smith's system, if fully implemented, would not allow steep inequalities to arise. In Smith, profits should be low and labor wages high, legislation in favor of the worker is “always just and equitable,” land should be distributed widely and evenly, inheritance laws liberalized, taxation can be high if it is equitable, and the science of the legislator is necessary to put the system in motion and keep it aligned. Market economies are made in Smith's system. Political theorists and economists have highlighted some of these points, but the counterfactual “what would the distribution of wealth be if all the building blocks were ever in place?” has not been posed. Doing so encourages us to question why steep inequality is accepted as a fact, instead of a pathology that the market economy was not supposed to generate in the first place.

The Herring Enlightenment: Adam Smith and the reform of British fishing subsidies, 1783–1799

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 600-619
Author(s):  
Alison Rieser
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Food Prices ◽  
Relative Role ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fishing Vessels ◽  
Parliamentary Debate ◽  
Public Subsidies ◽  
Fisheries Policy ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

In late eighteenth-century Britain, Adam Smith was the most influential thinker to offer advice on fisheries policy. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith argued that subsidized, offshore fishing vessels were being built to catch subsidies, not fish. He argued that the tonnage bounties, intended to promote an export trade in herring, had instead raised local food prices and destroyed the Scottish small-boat fishery. This article describes the parliamentary inquiries this criticism joined, including whether public subsidies could help to build a British fishery at an appropriate scale. Speculating on the relative role of politics, geography and Enlightenment thinking in the parliamentary debate, it concludes that the herring itself made the public subsidies system succeed. The ‘Grand Shoal’ known in earlier decades reassembled along the Scottish coasts, and catches by vessels of all sizes increased dramatically. When, by 1799, British herring catches equalled the Dutch fishery at its peak, the ‘fickle’ herring made Adam Smith’s experiment in fish policy and politics a success.

scholarly journals The Role of Human Capital in Economic Growth: A Comparative Study of Pakistan and India

2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (4II) ◽  
pp. 451-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qaisar Abbas
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Neoclassical Growth Model ◽  
The Past ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Intellectual Challenge ◽  
Neoclassical Growth

Economic Growth has posed an intellectual challenge ever since the beginning of systematic economic analysis. Adam Smith claimed that growth was related to division of labour, but he did not link them in a clear way. After that Thomas Malthus developed a formal model of a dynamic economic growth process in which each country converge toward stationary per capita income. According to this model, death rates fall and fertility rises when income exceed the equilibrium, and opposite occur when incomes are less than that level. Despite the influence of the Malthusian model in nineteenth century economists, fertility feel rather than rose as income grew during the past 150 years in the west and other parts of the world. The Neoclassical growth model of Solow (1956), which has been for the past thirty years the central framework to account for economic growth, focuses on exogenous technical population factors that determine output-input ratios, responded to the failure of Malthusian model.

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