Adam Smith's Stadial Analysis as a Sequence of Societal Growth Trajectories.

This paper indicates how a stadial analysis of the Smithian type can be constructed explicitly. It involves treating each stage in terms of a complete growth trajectory. The paper starts by constructing an explicit example of a complete, single growth trajectory. Then the Smithian stadial analysis is constructed explicitly as a sequence of such growth trajectories. This sequence has the characteristic that new growth trajectories emerge for new stages of society when stable, but ultimately undesirable stationary states are converted into unstable, but desirable, growth paths. Copyright 1989 by Scottish Economic Society.