L'aversion de l'auteur de la Richesse des Nations à l'égard de l'esclavage ne fait guère de doute et se double d'une argumentation économique. Comme celle de ses successeurs, jusqu'à Ricardo, Mill, puis Cairnes, l'argumentation de Smith conduit à conclure à l'inefficacité de l'esclavage...

Some recent writing on Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments has emphasised the importance of vanity as one of the most important human motivations. This reading leads to a new version of Das Adam Smith Problem, but this is unwarranted. Such a reading tends to conceal the significance that...

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith illustrates the importance of the division of labour with an example of a pin making enterprise. He compares an 18-step production process with an artificial benchmark. Measured productivity is 240times that of the benchmark. This reasoning is negligent. Adam...

This paper applies the ideas found in the work of Adam Smith, the preeminent 18th century economist, to the field of management. Adam Smith was the first person to identify specialization and the division of labor as the main drivers of productivity. He also conceptualized the 'invisible hand...

A sample of 299 U.S. economics professors, presumably random, responded to our survey which asked favorites in the following areas: Economic thinkers (pre-twentieth century, twentieth century now deceased, living age 60 or older, living under age 60), economics journals, and economics blogs....

This document offers an English translation of remarks that Pierre-Samuel Dupont de Nemours made in 1809, remarks principally about Adam Smith. Dupont suggests repeatedly that Adam Smith fudged some points in The Wealth of Nations, because, says Dupont, Smith “thought that in order to maintain...

Adam Smith’s outlook still inspires and informs modern sensibilities and argumentation. It is of interest beyond Smith aficionados whether a particular line of modern thought “fits” Smith. One important such dispute involves recent “left Smithian” writers who argue that he was more...

This is a reprinting of excerpts from William Robert Scott’s book Frances Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy (1900). The excerpts are about Hutcheson the man, teacher, mentor, and professor at the University of Glasgow. Adam Smith wrote of him as...

This paper provides a constructive critique of the work on the Office for National Statistic’s Measuring National Well-being project. Recalling Adam Smith’s work on happiness highlights how the work in this project, as well as most of the dominant work in the field remains based on...