Despite his fame, there is still widespread ignorance about the breadth of Adam Smith's contributions to economics, politics and philosophy. In Adam Smith - A Primer, Eamonn Butler provides an authoritative introduction to the life and work of this 'founder of economics'. The author examines not...

This paper offers a reinterpretation of quot;Adam Smith's problemquot; and reconsiders the relation between ethics and economics. It makes a critical revision of the attempts that seek to solve this problem, proposes an alternative framework constructed on the Smithian concepts of sympathy and...

Is it just to pursue honest income? Certainly it's commutatively just. But is it a becoming use of one's own? Is it distributively just? Presumptively, yes. The burden of proof should be on the one who denies that someone's pursuit of honest income is distributively just. Drawing closely on Adam...

This document includes the Introduction and table of contents of a project: Think Spiral: Essays on Adam Smith. The Introduction has the following sections: (1) A Social Grammar(2) The Three Justices: Commutative, Distributive, and Estimative(3) The Liberal Program(4) The Theory of Moral...

In studying the development of western freedoms, perhaps no subject is more worthy of discussion than classical liberalism, which the late historian Ralph Raico wrote was “the signature political philosophy of Western Civilization.” Raico defined classical liberalism as “the ideology...

Recently the Cambridge Journal of Economics has launched a project on New Perspectives on the work of Piero Sraffa in a conference and a special Issue of the Journal. “Almost two decades after the opening of the Sraffa Archives – [the Introduction reads] – and 50 years on from the...

The role of first principles in economics is examined through the lens of dominant methodological approaches of the classical and neoclassical periods. First principles are most clearly displayed in pure deductive systems. The tension between first principles as the basis for deductivist...

The role of first principles in economics is examined through the lens of dominant methodological approaches of the classical and neoclassical periods. First principles are most clearly displayed in pure deductive systems. The tension between first principles as the basis for deductivist...

Be it on topics of property, contract, commerce, trade, tax, legal history, or other matters, jurisprudence in the United States often invokes economic thinking in providing a rationale for legal outcomes. Consequently, I wondered how often the appeal to economic thinking in the courts included...