The great German mathematician David Hilbert famously identified 23 unsolved problems in mathematics in 1900. Following Hilbert’s example, this paper contributes to the literature on Adam Smith by identifying several unsolved problems involving the life and work of the great...

Game theory is a branch of social sciences that formalizes decision-making in situations where two or more individuals or groups interact, possibly having conflicting interests. In Ortmann & Walraevens (2022) we have reconstructed Smith’s ways of thinking about the social world by analyzing...

Adam Smith sees religion both as having a useful and a dangerous role. People create gods to explain what they do not understand and appease their desire of justice when human justice is perceived to fail. These are socially useful functions of religion. But when religion is used as a political...

When Adam Smith – author of Wealth of Nations (1776) and Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) – was elected Professor of Logic at Glasgow in 1751, he joined a benefit “scheme” that was unique for its time, although quite common in the 21st century. The scheme offered participants a choice...

The central question addressed in this note is whether it is better to sell (and re-purchase) appreciated assets now and pay today's long-term capital gains tax rate, or wait to realize gains in the future and pay a likely higher capital gains tax rate. The authors argue that a framework based...

This paper examines the conceptual semantics of two keywords belonging to the English vocabulary of economics discourse, money and value (intended as exchangeable value of goods), as originally theorized by Adam Smith in Chapter IV of the Wealth of Nations. It is argued that a semantic...

Adam Smith does not focus on the creation of an ideal world, but on the understanding that societal changes for the better are an unintentional product of commerce. Furthermore, as if to highlight the concreteness of these changes, he sees population growth as the way to measure this betterment...

Sheila Dow emphasizes the importance of context when reading a text. Here, I underline her point by presenting David Hume as inherently Scottish political economist. His economic concerns, his economic problems, and proposed economic solutions are shaped by the experience of 18th century...