Book IV of Wealth of Nations: Political Economy as Moral Philosophy

We’re joining our friends at Liberty Matters in their celebration of the 250th anniversary of the publication of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations through a series of six weekly essays. In this fourth essay, Brianne Wolf explores Book IV of Wealth of Nations, where Smith discusses the mercantile system,… MORE

Tyler Cowen is bullish on the integration of AI into higher education. He’s also not worried about its effects on the future workplace. Listen as Cowen speaks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about the reasons for his optimism, and argues that college classes should devote significant time to learning how to use AI. They discuss the… MORE

Question: Housing is a highly durable good and often lasts for many decades. Consider the housing market in Cleveland. Suppose that in 2026: Cleveland has 250,000 existing homes, all built before the year 2000. Homes never depreciate. No new homes have been built in Cleveland over the past 26 years. The marginal cost of building… MORE

The lesson is thus clear: Welcome multiple banks of issue and make sure there is always full convertibility, and bankers will be prudent and the economy will be stable and prosperous. Today we do not have banks of issue and notes cannot be converted into gold and silver, yet Smith’s lesson still applies: competition is… MORE

“Far more important to Smith’s work is the belief that ordinary people normally understand their own interests without help from politicians or professional philosophers.” “The Wealth of Nations is a stupendous palace erected upon the granite of self-interest.”1 So wrote George Stigler, and he represents the majority view over the last two centuries. But the… MORE

What is Humanomics?1 It sounds like a combination of human and economics. And indeed this book by Vernon Smith and Bart Wilson can be read as an attempt to reintroduce the human component into economics. It can be read as a criticism of modern economics and as the presentation of a substitute for it. It… MORE

The twentieth century witnessed the unparalleled expansion of government power over the lives and livelihoods of individuals. Much of this was the result of two devastating world wars and totalitarian ideologies that directly challenged individual liberty and the free institutions of the open society. Other forms of expansion in the provision of social welfare and… MORE

A five-part short video series on the life and contemporary relevance of Adam Smith. This video series, produced by AdamSmithWorks, can be watch as a full 38-minute feature, or in five thematic, classroom-friendly chunks. To access all, click here.   Below are some discussion prompts related to this video:   Part 1: The Invisible Hand… MORE

Nobel laureate James M. Buchanan (1919-2013) was recorded in 2001 in an extended video now available to the public. Universally respected as one of the founders of the economics of public choice, he is the author of numerous books and hundreds of articles in the areas of public finance, public choice, constitutional economics, and economic… MORE

For more than two centuries economists have steadfastly promoted free trade among nations as the best trade policy. Despite this intellectual barrage, many “practical” men and women continue to view the case for free trade skeptically, as an abstract argument made by ivory tower economists with, at most, one foot on terra firma. These practical… MORE

  With The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith installed himself as the leading expositor of economic thought. Currents of Adam Smith run through the works published by David Ricardo and Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, and by John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman in the twentieth. Adam Smith was born in a small village… MORE

Few subjects in economics have caused so much confusion—and so much groundless fear—in the past four hundred years as the thought that a country might have a deficit in its balance of payments. This fear is groundless for two reasons: (1) there never is a deficit, and (2) it would not necessarily hurt anything if… MORE