Creative Commons
Blogs I Follow
Tag Archives: Economics
Adam Smith and the division of labor: cure or curse?
The first three chapters of The Wealth of Nations (WN, I.i-iii) are devoted to the division of labor. Although Adam Smith will later have some bad things to say about the individual effects of the division of labor in Book … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged adam-smith, division-of-labor, Economics, History, Philosophy, Politics, specialization, the-wealth-of-nations
Leave a comment
Adam Smith counterfactual
A counterfactual is a statement about what would have happened if a past event had been different. It’s a “what if?” scenario, considering an alternative reality where something that actually occurred did not, or vice versa. On this note, below … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged adam-smith, cognitive-dissonance, commissioner-of-customs, Economics, History
Leave a comment
Das Problem des Reichtums: What does Adam Smith mean by *wealth* in The Wealth of Nations?
Below is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of my forthcoming survey of Adam Smith problems with Salim Rashid: “’Wealth’, in the words of Robert L. Heilbroner, ‘is a fundamental concept in economics—indeed, perhaps the conceptual starting point for the discipline.’ … Continue reading
A Coasian critique of Kurt Gray’s harm thesis: part 1 of 3
Yesterday, I read Elizabeth Kolbert’s review (see here) of Kurt Gray’s new book Outraged: Why We Fight about Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground on pp. 63-65 of the January 20th issue of The New Yorker. Among … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Economics, Ethics, kurt-gray, Politics, reciprocal-harms, Ronald Coase
1 Comment
A provocative Parisian pamphlet
(Author’s note: below is Part 3 of 3 of my series of blog posts on Adam Smith’s first visit to Paris.) The pamphlet, Richesses de l’etat, took Paris by storm and stirred up an enormous debate about royal finances. (Darnton … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged adam-smith, Economics, finance, History, Paris, Politics, roussel-de-la-tour, taxation
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 … Continue reading
World Truth League White Paper
Is it possible to test the truth-values of popular or entrenched conspiracy theories without resorting to censorship? To this end, Steve Kuhn and yours truly have just posted our new “World Truth League White Paper” to SSRN. In brief, we … Continue reading
REVISED TABLE OF *ADAM SMITH PROBLEMS*
I presented “DIE ADAM SMITH PROBLEME” at the Adam Smith Tokyo Conference yesterday (11 March 2024) and got lots of feedback. (Shout outs to the International Adam Smith Society for inviting me to present my work, to Waseda University for … Continue reading
Table of Adam Smith Problems
Below the fold is a summary in table form — revised and corrected on 8 March 2024 — of my work-in-progress DIE ADAM SMITH PROBLEME” (with Salim Rashid):
Two more Adam Smith problems
Note: TMS refers to Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, while WN = The Wealth of Nations I mentioned in a previous post (see here or below) that typing “another Adam Smith problem” into Google Scholar’s search engine generates nine results: … Continue reading
prior probability 