We compare and analyse two different conceptions of market competition: the walrasian notion of perfect competition and the Classical notion of free competition: while the former may be described as an equilibrium state in which atomistic agents treat prices parametrically, the latter is a...

Constant returns to scale (CRS) is one of the corner-stones of the competitive general equilibrium paradigm of neoclassical economics. This note argues that the equilibrium solutions of this paradigm are not compatible with CRS. CRS implies that all producers (whatever their scale of production)...

The paper analyzes Adam Smith’s views on monopoly focusing on Book IV and V of The Wealth of Nations and argues that Smith has left his analysis of monopoly in an embryonic form while the majority of scholars have assessed it starting from premises different from those, actually though...

In his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith (1776) considered the phenomenon of division of labor so enormously significant for the creation of a nation’s wealth that he devoted the first three chapters of his book to an investigation of this process. This is...

The mirror-neuron system (MNS) becomes instigated when the spectator empathizes with the principal’s intention. MNS also involves imitation, where empathy is irrelevant. While the former may attenuate the principal’s emotion, the latter paradoxically reinforces it. This paper proposes a...

This paper is the first part of a Marxian critique of the theory of the firm, focusing on the analysis of labour values. Starting from Adam Smith's example of the deer hunter marginal analysis is introduced, culminating in the derivation of the Labour Value Function as the supply curve of the...

This paper examines the contribution of The Theory of Moral Sentiments to the study of how we acquire moral knowledge. In Smith, this is associated with the moral judgment of an impartial spectator, a hypothetical ideal conjured in the imagination of an agent. This imagined spectator has the...

This paper is the first part of a Marxian critique of the theory of the firm focusing on the analysis of labour values. Starting from Adam Smith's example of the deer hunter, marginal analysis is introduced culminating in the derivation of the Labour Value Function as the supply curve of the...

Adam Smith sought to illustrate some of his propositions in The Wealth of Nations (WON) with examples from Africa. However, the examples were few, and many were neither profound nor instructive from a principles viewpoint. I find that Africa figures very little in the WON, and nearly every time...

The paper seeks to fill a lacuna within Classical economics concerning the process of market price determination in a short-period equilibrium. To this aim, first we distinguish the Classical notion of free competition from the Walrasian notion of perfect competition and we argue that the latter...