Following Smith's line of argument, we discuss the semantics of four economic principles in Chapter III of the 'Wealth of Nations' that compose Adam Smith's famous proposition “that division of labour is limited by the extent of the market.” We apply the Natural Semantic Metalanguage...

The moral philosopher and political economist Adam Smith (1723-1790) and the author Mary Shelley (1798-1851) are studied in different spheres of the academy, for rather different purposes, with no supposed reason for dialogue. We claim in a close concurrent reading, however, that Smith and...

If there is a favorite sentence that encapsulates Vernon Smith’s contribution to how I think about economics, it is the first one in the second footnote of his Nobel lecture: “Doing experimental economics has changed the way I think about economics” (reprinted in Smith, 2003; p. 465). He...

Deceiving someone in our everyday lives is a moral failing, one that we are adept at detecting and quick to judge in the words and actions of others. In our professional lives as economic scientists we are also quick to judge experimental procedures as deceptive, but we have problems...