Sunday song: *Sabbatical*

I heard this song somewhere in Santiago de Chile last week — on the afternoon of 18 July, according to Shazam — and what a fitting title, considering that I will be on a well-deserved sabbatical until the end of the year.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Isla de Pascua (Rapa Nui)

The photo below was taken at the Tahai Ceremonial Complex on Easter Island.🗿

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Friday funnies: @YIMBYLAND

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Das Adam Smith Metaproblem?

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

File under: international cooperation

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How it started; how it’s going …

Below is the Tweet version of my joint paper with the formidable Salim Rashid, Die Adam Smith Probleme. (I will have more to say about our work in the next day or two; in the meantime, shout outs to Evandro Barbosa, David Batt, John Berdell, David M. Levy, Mark Rathbone, and Geoffrey Sayre-McCord for their comments and questions.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Monday music: *No podrás*

I overheard this classic the other day somewhere along Avenida Santa Fe in Buenos Aires, a song I had not heard in years! It’s the first track on Christian Castro’s 1992 debut solo album Agua Nueva (see here or here), and boy, does this melancholic ballad bring back some memories …

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

*Die Adam Smith Problem*

Greetings from South America! I will be presenting an updated version of my co-authored paper “Die Adam Smith Problem” (with Salim Rashid, Illinois) on Monday morning, July 15, at a joint meeting of the History of Economics Society (HES) and International Adam Smith Society (IASS) at the Universidad de Desarrollo in Santiago de Chile. (Here is the conference program.) In the meantime, I have posted the revised draft of the paper to SSRN; see here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Friday funnies: thank you card regress

This “Thank you for your thank you card” is something, I believe, my beloved Jorge Luis Borges would have loved!

Artist credit: Harriet Richardson
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment