David Hume thought that a taste for luxury was desirable because it promoted economic and political development (it brought down feudalism, among other things). Adam Smith's early works follow a very similar line though, unlike Hume, he saw a taste for luxury as rather contemptible despite its...

This paper draws attention to two relatively neglected features of Adam Smith's analysis of rent and profit. First, he assumed that all land is used for something and that there are many agricultural products. There is no zero rent margin in David Ricardo's sense but the decision to invest in...