I presented Die Adam Smith Probleme — a burgeoning work-in-progress that I have co-authored with Salim Rashid, who wrote The Myth of Adam Smith (available here) — at a special joint session of the History of Economics Society (HES) and International Adam Smith Society (IASS) in Santiago de Chile earlier this week. In brief, the premise of our work is that there is more than one “Adam Smith problem”; cf. the so-called Das Adam Smith Problem of lore.

Our thesis is that there are many Adam Smith problems! But how many? The meta-problem we are currently grappling with is this: how should we define what a “problem” is, or in the alternative, what criterion (or set of criteria) should we use to decide which problems get included in our global table of Adam Smith problems? Or as our colleague and friend John Berdell observed after I presented the paper: “There are potentially as many ‘Adam Smith problems’ as there are papers on Adam Smith”.

Suffice it to say, Salim and I will give these difficult questions some additional thought; in the meantime, I will assemble the rest of the feedback we received at the special session and report back soon.