This paper, based on the introductory remarks made at the two-day conference on “The State of the Economy, the State of the World,” is an idiosyncratic stocktaking of the trajectory of economics from Adam Smith to contemporary times, with special attention to the rise of development...

Schumpeter misevaluated Adam Smith's contributions in the Wealth of Nations in his monumental History of Economic Analysis (1954) by overlooking the originality of Smith's unique contributions to decision theory, his definition of uncertainty, and his application of the uncertainty versus risk...

Ramsey's 1922 “review” of J M Keynes's A Treatise on Probability (1921) is an intellectual mess. Ramsey fails to score even one point against Keynes. It was most likely published because of Ramsey's alleged reputation as the “boy genius”. There are myriad errors in the review. For just...

Adam Smith is commonly referred to as one of the first who thought of foreign trade in terms of an international division of labour, whereby each country specialises in the production of certain goods. It is argued that he made a strong case for foreign trade on this basis. In this article, I...