Ronald Coase (1910-2013), who sadly died at the remarkable age of 102, made significant contributions to economics based on common sense and the detailed study of his topics. Coase was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991 “for his discovery and clarification of the significance...

In Appreciation and Interest Irving Fisher (1896) derived an equation connecting interest rates in any two standards of value. The original Fisher equation (OFE) was expressed in terms of the expected appreciation of money [percent change in E(1/P)] whereas the ubiquitous conventional Fisher...

The positions of British and German economists on public debt in the long 19th century differed substantially from each other. While British classical economists regarded any public debt as ruinous for the country, German economists promoted debt accumulation for productivity-enhancing public...

How do we measure economic growth? In the 18th century, well before the birth of Gross Domestic Product commonly used today, looking at the sign of the balance of trade was a way to take the pulse of a nation’s economy. Adam Smith rejects this measure and instead suggests that we should look...

This essay seeks to trace the many—and often conflicting—economic ideological interpretations of the transatlantic abolitionist impulse. In particular, it explores the contested relationship between free-trade ideology and transatlantic abolitionism, and highlights the understudied influence...

The rise of anti-establishment movements in contemporary societies has prompted political studies on the causes of their resurgence. This article explores Adam Smith’s views on the origin of these movements, analysing his treatment of fanaticism, which is usually seen only as a problem of...

Conceptual lenses, or models (Allison 1969; Ortmann 2008), draw on stable ways of thinking about the world, or “reasoning routines”. We explore the deep structure of Adam Smith’s work, and to what extent it is the result of a set of “reasoning routines” that, at an early stage of his...

It is argued that the status of the nation state in Adam Smith's intellectual system, the 'Science of the Legislator,' was historically transitory. Smith's conception of international relations focused on gains from international trade and openness as well as the dynamics of international...

Before World War I, most foreign investment in Latin America came from Britain. By World War II, however, the United States had become the main and unchallenged foreign investor in the region. This analysis of the negotiations that took place between the British firm (Pearson and Son) and the...

The United Kingdom (UK) officially left the European Union (EU) in January 2020. While the nature of its future relations with the rest of the EU Members is couched in a Trade and Cooperation Agreement concluded in extremis in December 2020, it will cease to be part of several agreements...