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Adam Smith and the Classics: The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith's Thought

Gloria Vivenza

Adam Smith's thought was indebted to the classical training prevailing in the educational system of his day. A careful reading of all his writings can prove the extent of this debt. Classical ... More

Adam Smith's thought was indebted to the classical training prevailing in the educational system of his day. A careful reading of all his writings can prove the extent of this debt. Classical influences are obviously more numerous and easily discernible in the philosophical works, but are not absent from the economic masterpiece. They have been described by the author without having recourse to conjectures or implications, rather by analysing the topics whose classical origin can be ascertained. The book has been divided into chapters devoted to the traditional branches of knowledge treated by Adam Smith: natural philosophy, ethics, jurisprudence, economics, literature; plus a postscript.Smith was not only influenced by classical doctrines but he also selected from them argumentssuited to support his own ideas.Less

Adam Smith's System of Liberty, Wealth, and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of The Wealth of Nations

Athol Fitzgibbons

Adam Smith's System is a study in classical economic thought and methodology. It portrays Adam Smith as a Stoic philosopher who wanted virtue to be relevant to this life rather than to ... More

Adam Smith's System is a study in classical economic thought and methodology. It portrays Adam Smith as a Stoic philosopher who wanted virtue to be relevant to this life rather than to the next. His central purpose was to define a set of laws, a jurisprudence in the widest possible sense, which would permit economic and political liberalism to proceed without triggering long‐run moral degeneration. Smith argued that the conflict between morals and wealth was only apparent, because it was possible to synthesize the seeming contraries with better laws and moral rules.All of Smith's writings are analysed, including his writings on morals and methodology, art and rhetoric, and his political and economic writings. The relevance of Wealth of Nations is analysed, and Smith's theories of free trade and economic growth are put into context. It is shown that Smith was primarily concerned with the very broad intellectual endeavour to replace the Aristotelian world‐view, the bulwark and inspiration of medieval Christian thought, with an outlook that was more consistent with Newtonian science.Less

The Affluent Society Revisited

Mike Berry

This book looks at the background to and causes of the global economic crisis that erupted in 2008 and is with us still. It does this by revisiting a classic book of the past, John Kenneth ... More

This book looks at the background to and causes of the global economic crisis that erupted in 2008 and is with us still. It does this by revisiting a classic book of the past, John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society. Each chapter takes a major theme of his book, distils Galbraith’s arguments and then discusses to what extent they cast light on current developments, both in the developed economies and in the economics discipline. The themes include: inequality, insecurity, inflation, debt, consumer behaviour, ‘financialisation’, the economic role of government (‘social balance’), the power of ideas, the role of power in the economy and the nature of the good society. These are enduring concerns for citizens, no more than now as governments, businesses and consumers seek to recover from the economic tsunami that washed over the major Western economies (and is yet to fully recede). As such, the book deals with the big current problems of capitalism and the huge challenges facing democratic governments in tackling them. The book argues that orthodox economic models and policy advice failed spectacularly to warn of impending crisis and has subsequently failed to help lift the struggling advanced economies back on the path to sustainable prosperity. It concludes that although much has happened, in the global economy and in the discipline of economics, since Galbraith wrote, many of the themes he raised and answers he provided remain relevant today.Less

Categories and Contexts: Anthropological and Historical Studies in Critical Demography

Simon Szreter, Hania Sholkamy, and A. Dharmalingam (eds)

Throughout its history as a social science discipline, demography has been associated with an exclusively quantitative orientation for studying population problems. An important outcome of this is ... More

Throughout its history as a social science discipline, demography has been associated with an exclusively quantitative orientation for studying population problems. An important outcome of this is that demographers tend to analyse population issues scientifically through sets of fixed social categories that are divorced from their embeddedness in dynamic relationships and in varied local contexts and processes. The collection of essays in this volume questions these fixed categories in two ways: firstly, by examining the historical and political circumstances in which such categories have their provenance, and secondly, in reassessing their uncritical applications over space and time in a diverse range of empirical case studies. Reflexive questioning is achieved by encouraging a constructive interdisciplinary dialogue involving anthropologists, demographers, historians, and sociologists.This volume seeks to examine the political complexities that lie at the heart of population studies, through a focus on category formation, category use, and category critique. It is shown that this takes the form of a dialectic between the needs for clarity of scientific and administrative analysis and the recalcitrant diversity of the social contexts and human processes that generate population change. The critical reflections on the established categories in each of the essays included here are enriched by meticulous ethnographic fieldwork and historical, archival research, drawn from all the continents. The essays collected here, therefore, exemplify a new methodology for research in population studies, which does not simply accept and use the established categories of population science, but seeks critically and reflexively to explore, test, and re‐evaluate their meanings in diverse contexts. The essays show that for demography to realise its full potential, there is an urgent need to re‐examine and contextualise the social categories used today in population research.Less

Economic Morality and Jewish Law

Aaron Levine

This book compares the way in which welfare economics and Jewish law determine the propriety of an economic action, whether by a private citizen or the government. Espousing what philosophers would ... More

This book compares the way in which welfare economics and Jewish law determine the propriety of an economic action, whether by a private citizen or the government. Espousing what philosophers would call a consequentialist ethical system, welfare economics evaluates the worthiness of an economic action based on whether the action would increase the wealth of society in the long run. In sharp contrast, Jewish law espouses a deontological system of ethics. Within this ethical system, the determination of the propriety of an action is entirely a matter of discovering the applicable rule in Judaism's code of ethics. This volume explores a variety of issues implicating morality for both individual commercial activity and economic public policy. Issues examined include price controls, the living wage, the lemons problem, short selling, and Ronald Coase's seminal theories on negative externalities. To provide an analytic framework for the study of these issues, the work first delineates the normative theories behind the concept of economic morality for welfare economics and Jewish law, and presents a case study illustrating the deontological nature of Jewish law. The book introduces what for many readers will be a new perspective on familiar economic issues. Despite the very different approaches that welfare economics and Jewish law take in evaluating the worthiness of an economic action, the book reveals a symmetry between the two systems in their ultimate prescriptions for certain economic issues.Less

Economics and the Virtues: Building a New Moral Foundation

Jennifer A. Baker and Mark D. White (eds)

While ethics has been an integral part of economics since the days of Adam Smith (if not Aristotle), many modern economists dismiss ethical concerns in favor of increasing formal mathematical and ... More

While ethics has been an integral part of economics since the days of Adam Smith (if not Aristotle), many modern economists dismiss ethical concerns in favor of increasing formal mathematical and computational methods. But recent financial crises in the real world have reignited discussions on the importance of ethics to economics, including growing calls for a new approach to incorporating moral philosophy in economic theory, practice, and policy. Ironically, it is the ethics of virtue advocated by Aristotle and Adam Smith that may lead to the most promising way of developing an economics that emphasizes the virtues, character, and judgment of the agents it models. In Economics and the Virtues, editors Jennifer A. Baker and Mark D. White have brought together fourteen leading scholars in economics and philosophy to offer ' to 'This book offers'. delete 'With insights that are novel as well as rooted in time-tested ethical thought, Economics and the Virtues will be of interest to economists, philosophers, and other scholars in the social sciences and humanities, as well as professionals and policy-makers in the fields of economics and finance, and makes an invaluable contribution to the ongoing discussion over the role of ethics in economics.'Less

The Genesis of Macroeconomics: New Ideas from Sir William Petty to Henry Thornton

Antoin E. Murphy

This is a book about the discovery of macroeconomic ideas and concepts long before the term macroeconomics had been coined. The cast of authors varies from doctors and physicians (Sir William Petty ... More

This is a book about the discovery of macroeconomic ideas and concepts long before the term macroeconomics had been coined. The cast of authors varies from doctors and physicians (Sir William Petty and François Quesnay), to philosophers (David Hume and Adam Smith), to bankers (Richard Cantillon and Henry Thornton) to Prime Ministers of France (John Law and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot). These authors had very rich and varied careers and the book re-creates specific moments in their careers that influenced both their lives and their writings. Building on these events the contributions of each author are outlined and discussed. Examination of their writings show that by the start of the 19th century they had left a rich legacy of macroeconomics ranging from the analysis and measurement of national income, the depiction of the circular flow of income, the debate on the role of money in the economy, the way to model the economy, the importance of labour, land and capital, the role of entrepreneurship, the Central Bank as a lender of last resort, and much more.Less

A History of Econometrics: The Reformation from the 1970s

Duo Qin

This book is a sequel of Qin's previous OUP volume The Formation of Econometrics: A Historical Perspective. That book traces the history roughly during the period 1930-1960. The present book is ... More

This book is a sequel of Qin's previous OUP volume The Formation of Econometrics: A Historical Perspective. That book traces the history roughly during the period 1930-1960. The present book is focused on the reformists’ movements mainly during the 1970s and 1980s. After a background description of the formation and consolidation of the Cowles Commission (CC) paradigm, it traces and analyses the three major methodological attempts to resolve problems involved in model choice and specification of the CC paradigm. These attempts have reoriented the focus of econometric research from internal questions (how to optimally estimate a priori given structural parameters) to external questions (how to choose, design, and specify models). Next, it examines various modelling issues and problems through two case studies – modelling the Phillips curve and business cycles. The third part of the book delves into the development of three key aspects of model specification in details – structural parameters, error terms, and model selection and design procedures. The final chapter uses citation analyses to study the impact of the CC paradigm over the span of three and half decades (1970-2005). The citation statistics show that the impact has remained extensive and relatively strong in spite of certain weakening signs. It implies that the reformative attempts have fallen short of causing a paradigm shift.Less

Jacob Mincer: A Founding Father of Modern Labor Economics

Pedro N. Teixeira

This book presents the work of one of the most important economists of the second half of the 20th century, Jacob Mincer. Mincer played a central role in shaping contemporary labor economics, namely ... More

This book presents the work of one of the most important economists of the second half of the 20th century, Jacob Mincer. Mincer played a central role in shaping contemporary labor economics, namely through his pioneering work in human capital and labor supply analysis. The book presents a systematic analysis of all his extensive published work, emphasizing its continuity as a lifetime research program that had a lasting influence in modern labor economics. The analysis also highlights his main theoretical and methodological traits that make his research so unique.Less

Keynesian Reflections: Effective Demand, Money, Finance, and Policies in the Crisis

Toshiaki Hirai, Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, and Perry Mehrling (eds)

The global financial crisis, which began in August 2007 and continues with no end in sight, has thrown macroeconomics into turmoil. The central purpose of this book is to suggest an alternative road ... More

The global financial crisis, which began in August 2007 and continues with no end in sight, has thrown macroeconomics into turmoil. The central purpose of this book is to suggest an alternative road for the future of macroeconomics without the illusion of automatic (albeit imperfect) adjustment toward an intertemporal general equilibrium with rational expectations. This book challenges the current mainstream macroeconomic tradition known as New Keynesian economics in so far as it shares common ground with the New Classical models. It is rather the Keynesian spirit, above all, that provides the linking theme for the papers in this volume, that were written originally for conferences held in Tokyo (2010, 2011) and in Florence (2012). Keynesian Reflections has been chosen as a title of this book to indicate that Keynes remains a relevant and vital starting point for understanding modern problems, as well as inspiration for inventing the new economics that modern problems demand. The distinguishing feature of the Keynesian approach is a conception of economics as extension of human possibilities, proposing remedies to safeguard the general interest as condition for prosperity and social harmony. His approach appeals to the principles of shared responsibility between debtors and creditors, collective action in place of individual self-interest, and the pursuit of individual liberties within a context of norms and rules. Keynes’s middle way between extreme liberalism on the one hand and pervasive government intervention on the other still appears a viable path towards equitable growth.Less

Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation

Daniel B. Klein

Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek saw the liberty principle as focal and accorded it strong presumption, but their wisdom invokes how little we can know. This book re-examines the elements of economic ... More

Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek saw the liberty principle as focal and accorded it strong presumption, but their wisdom invokes how little we can know. This book re-examines the elements of economic liberalism. It interprets Hayek’s notion of spontaneous order from the aestheticized perspective of a Smithian spectator, real or imagined. The book addresses issues that economists have had surrounding the notion of coordination by distinguishing the concatenate coordination of Hayek, Ronald Coase, and Michael Polanyi from the mutual coordination of Thomas Schelling and game theory. Clarifying the meaning of cooperation, it resolves debates over whether entrepreneurial innovation enhances or upsets coordination, and thus interprets entrepreneurship in terms of discovery or new knowledge. Beyond information, knowledge entails interpretation and judgment, emergent from tacit reaches of the “society of mind,” itself embedded in actual society. Rejecting homo economicus in favor of the “deepself,” the book offers a distinctive formulation of knowledge economics, entailing asymmetric interpretation, judgment, entrepreneurship, error, and correction-and kinds of discovery-which all serve the cause of liberty. The book highlights the recurring connections to underlying purposes and sensibilities, of analysts as well as agents. Behind economic talk of market communication and social error and correction lies the book’s Smithian allegory, with the allegorical spectator representing a conception of the social. Knowledge and Coordination instructs us to declare such allegory.Less

The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: The History of Information in Modern Economics

Philip Mirowski and Edward Nik-Khah

In contrast with conventional histories of “economic rationality,” in this book we propose that the history of modern microeconomics is better organized as the treatment of information in postwar ... More

In contrast with conventional histories of “economic rationality,” in this book we propose that the history of modern microeconomics is better organized as the treatment of information in postwar economics. Beginning with a brief primer on the nature of information, we then explore how economists first managed their rendezvous with it, tracing its origins to the Neoliberal Thought Collective and Friedrich Hayek. The response to this perceived threat was mounted by the orthodoxy at the Cowles Commission, leading to at least three distinct model strategies. But the logic of the models led to multiply cognitively challenged agents, which then logically led to a stress on markets to rectify those weaknesses. Unwittingly, the multiple conceptions of agency led to multiple types of markets; and the response of the orthodoxy was to shift research away from previous Walrasian themes to what has become known as market design. But internal contradictions in the market design programs led to a startling conclusion: just like their agents, the orthodox economists turned out to be not as smart as they had thought. A little information had turned out to be a dangerous thing.Less

Lectures in Macroeconomics: A Capitalist Economy Without Unemployment

Kazimierz Łaski

Jerzy Osiatyński and Jan Toporowski (eds)

These lectures in macroeconomics explain the theory and policy implications of macroeconomics in a systematic and logically consistent way. Central to this analysis is the principle of aggregate ... More

These lectures in macroeconomics explain the theory and policy implications of macroeconomics in a systematic and logically consistent way. Central to this analysis is the principle of aggregate demand as formulated by the Polish economist Michał Kalecki, who is best known as the originator, along with Keynes, of the Keynesian Revolution in macroeconomics. The lectures cover the main components of aggregate demand, showing the key importance of firms’ investment for total output, employment, and economic growth in both closed and open economies. The main influences on investment are explained and how, through the circular flow of income and expenditure, investment generates profits in the economy. However, investment is unstable and the government therefore has a central role in stabilizing such an economy at high rates of employment. Along with investment, the labor market and wages then determine the distribution of income. This leads on to an examination of the role of money and finance in the contemporary capitalist economy. The analysis is illustrated with statistics and a survey of the evolution of capitalist economies since World War II, along with critical observations on the neoclassical approach to economics.Less

The Making of Competition Policy: Legal and Economic Sources

Daniel A. Crane and Herbert Hovenkamp (eds)

This book provides edited selections of primary source material in the intellectual history of competition policy from Adam Smith to the present day. Chapters include classical theories of ... More

This book provides edited selections of primary source material in the intellectual history of competition policy from Adam Smith to the present day. Chapters include classical theories of competition, the U.S. founding era, classicism and neoclassicism, progressivism, the New Deal, structuralism, the Chicago School, and post-Chicago theories. Although the focus is largely on Anglo-American sources, there is also a chapter on European Ordoliberalism, an influential school of thought in post-War Europe. Each chapter begins with a brief essay pulling together the important themes from the period under consideration.Less

Multidisciplinary Economics: A Methodological Account

Piet Keizer

Human motivation offers energy, and circumstances possibilities. Only in combination does human action take place. Over time, desires and opportunities to satisfy them closely interact. Orthodox ... More

Human motivation offers energy, and circumstances possibilities. Only in combination does human action take place. Over time, desires and opportunities to satisfy them closely interact. Orthodox economics analyses only the economic motivation in interaction with economic resources. By assuming perfect rationality and non-sociality it creates a so-called economic world, and analyses the economic mechanism of allocation of scarce resources. Neoclassical economists use this world as a theoretical foundation for their empirical research. Heterodox economics rejects this strategy of isolating one motivation. But, after thorough analysis of heterodox schools of thought, this book concludes that their idea of human motivation as variable and endogenous is badly analysed. This leads to a discussion of a whole series of psychological and sociological approaches from a methodological perspective. The result is a mass of paradigms, analyses, and theories, which make it possible to construct a psychic and a social world respectively—completely comparable with the agent-structure model of the economic world. The three isolated worlds are integrated by analysing their interactions. In the integrated world the three structures are each other’s foundation. This human world gives familiar economic concepts, such as utility, efficiency, rationality, cost, and benefit, different meanings. So with psychic concepts, such as self, willpower, and personality, and social concepts, such as status, power, culture, and morality. In this way a better understanding of complex situations is possible. To make the model more realistic it should be dynamic and historical and placed in the context of the world as an open system.Less

On Custom in the Economy

Ekkehart Schlicht

Custom is an integral part of the institutional matrix of modern economies. Market processes hinge crucially on custom, which in turn affect these processes. The book proposes a theory of custom that ... More

Custom is an integral part of the institutional matrix of modern economies. Market processes hinge crucially on custom, which in turn affect these processes. The book proposes a theory of custom that emphasizes the motivational force that arises from the individual's striving for coherence and justification. It depicts custom as comprising habitual, cognitive, and emotional aspects and explains that market transactions rely on customary entitlements and obligations. The motivational force of custom emerges from a preference for regularity and a desire for coherence that tie cognition, emotion, and action together. The view is applied to the theory of property, the theory of the law, the theory of the firm, and the problem of the division of labour and the conditions under which that division of labour is better organized by the firm or by the market.Less