The Wealth of Nations

Previous educators have rightly drawn attention to The Wealth of Nations as a critique of mercantilism, the dominant economic system at that time. For Smith, mercantilism wasn't just economically...

One of the most frequently quoted sentences in Adam Smith's treatise The Wealth of Nations concerns the tendency of businessmen to create price-fixing conspiracies and cartels when left to their...

In looking at this question, it's important to understand who was in charge of the government at that particular time. In Adam Smith's Britain, it was mainly the landed aristocracy in charge. In...

While Smith's work was foundational for the discipline of economics, technology and business practices have changed radically over the past few centuries. Free markets depend on symmetry of...

The idea that pursuing private interests can lead to public benefits was first advanced some seventy years before Smith's Wealth of Nation in The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Public...

One of the most important of Smith's ideas in The Wealth of Nations is that government should interfere in the running of the economy as little as possible. To be sure, Smith believed that the...

An economist’s perspective on this statement is that it lays out the basis of how a market economy works. This statement expresses the basic attitudes that underlie the concepts of supply and...

The organization innovation of the “pin” (we call them nails now) factory that Adam Smith discussed in The Wealth of Nations was the division of labor. Smith argued that the division of labor...

This sentiment by Adam Smith was and continues to be typical of white supremacist frameworks of history and global realities. The so-called "Americas" were not discovered by the regrettably famed...

Adam Smith uses the “invisible hand” metaphor to explain processes that affect socio-economic outcomes. The processes grow out of accumulated, rather than individual, actions. Even if each...

Smith realizes that if a modern economy is to prosper, it will do so through the efforts of businesses, not government. Smith understands that healthy, prosperous businesses will ultimately lead to...

Smith's concern here is not that the government will intervene but that companies that produce similar goods or provide similar services will get together in order to fix prices, control...

Adam Smith was writing during a time in which governments granting businesses monopolies, imposing tariffs, and restricting trade was business as usual. Adams strongly believed this choked off...

The major point of this book is that government should stay out of economics for the most part. The book argues that there is an "invisible hand" that will lead to a strong economy if the...

One of the most famous phrases from The Wealth of Nations is that of "the invisible hand", a metaphor to explain how a market economy works. This is the partially unintended result of individual...

Adam Smith's faith in the free market is one area that would provoke intense disagreement from Karl Marx. A major component of Smith's analysis is his belief that the free market that can function...

Overall, The Wealth of Nations was important in that it provided an intellectual basis for the growth of capitalism and free market economies. It did so in a number of related ways. In terms of...

Adam Smith in his explanation of natural price in relationship to market price stated: Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce any thing; scarce anything can be had in...

The industrial revolution and the free market economic theory presented by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations influenced the economic and social organization of several nations. France and Great...

Mercantilism was a system that believed that national wealth was represented by how much gold and silver a nation could amass. Through gaining as much gold and silver as possible, a country was...