Adam Smith Project
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Barry R. Weingast
1. Overview of Discussion Drafts and Short Papers in Progress

As project my project on Adam Smith is on-going, it remains incomplete. My work on falls into three categories: (i) complete Discussion Drafts available on this website; (ii) a set of short papers and notes available on this website; and (iii) those Discussion Drafts that I’ve begun but remain unfinished.

I rely on the same methodological perspective in each of the ten Discussion Drafts below. A series of simple games provide an equilibrium analysis focusing on aspect of why certain societies fail to develop or become rich. And, to varying degrees, each draft contains a theoretical explanation for why these growth-hindering equilibria break down. Put simply, Smith provides explanations for how and why particular countries develop in political, legal, and economic terms.

1.1. Nine Discussion Drafts

– Comments Welcome!

— Send to: weingast@stanford.edu

1. “Deriving ‘General Principles’ in Adam Smith:

The Ubiquity of Equilibrium and Comparative Statics

Analysis throughout His Works” (with Glory Liu)

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This paper contributes to the debate over the unity in Smith’s corpus by emphasizing his pervasive use of an analytic method. Specifically, Smith consistently relies on equilibrium arguments to explain why a given pattern of economic, political, or social interaction is stable; and comparative static arguments to explain how a stable pattern changes. Our paper focuses on several examples central to his work: the political economics of development in the Wealth of Nations and the Lectures on Jurisprudence; the learning and of and adherence to moral norms in the Theory of Moral Sentiments; and the development and evolution of language in Smith’s essay on the “First Formation of Languages.”

We argue that Smith’s analysis of patterns of central tendencies and “general rules”—equilibria—and the conditions under which those rules change are defining features of his “science of man.” Not only do they anticipate analytic modes in modern social science, Smith’s use of equilibrium and comparative statics arguments demonstrates how his approach to social science was exportable and applicable to many realms of human behavior beyond economics.

2. “Adam Smith’s Theory of Violence and the Political-Economics of Development”

in Naomi R. Lamoreaux and John Joseph Wallis, .eds., Organizations, Civil Society,

and the Roots of Development. Chicago: NBER and University of Chicago Press, 2017.

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Why are some countries rich and others poor? In other words, what accounts for the differences in the “wealth of nations?” Smith’s answer to this question is complex and has yet to be fully understood, despite the voluminous literature on his magnum opus, the Wealth of Nations.

On the economic side, Smith’s answer is well-known and includes the division of labor, capital accumulation, and the absence regulations that encumber competition and markets. However, scholars have often overlooked the prevalence of violence in Smith’s work, which he argued represented an impediment to economic and political development.

This paper studies Smith’s argument for the long-term stability and violence of the growth-inhibiting feudal society in medieval Europe, a type of violence trap: In the face of systematic violence, individuals have little incentive to be industrious, to save, or to invest. To do so is to stand out as a target for predation. Smith also explains how the towns escaped this violence trap, providing security and justice (including strong property rights and contract enforcement) as the infrastructure for commerce and long-distance trade. Indeed, Smith argued that development required three mutually reinforcing elements, liberty, commerce, and security.[3] Besides highlighting the importance of overcoming the violence trap, this paper shows how new institutions arose that changed incentives facing various actors so that the towns could overcome the violence trap.

3. “Liberty and the Neoclassical Fallacy”

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Does liberty matter for economists? To address this question, I distinguish among three different types of liberty: Adam Smith’s, the neoclassical, and the so-called “classical liberal.” They differ in that the neoclassical and the classical liberal perspectives presume the existence, typically without noting it, of the four conditions that comprise the foundation of liberty, namely, secure property rights, enforcement of contracts, an absence of government predation, and security. In contrast, Adam Smith sought to explain these foundations. In this paper, an extraliterary essay on one of the central themes of Acemoglu and Robinson (2019), I draw the implications of Smith’s approach. I explain why neoclassical economics—which takes security and the foundations of liberty as given—is unable to understand the work of Smith on this topic and, hence, on economic development. I show that the neoclassical and the classical liberal approaches are built on a foundation of magic: because they both presume the foundational conditions just noted but fail to explain how they arise. Put simply, the neoclassical approach has no explanation for the origin of liberty or of the mechanisms that sustain it. If markets require the four conditions of the foundation of liberty, then a complete explanation of the origin and development of markets must include an explanation of how these conditions come to hold. The Smithian economic perspective is especially important for developing countries, most of which, at best, struggle to create the four foundational assumptions of liberty.

4. “A Neglected Element of Adam Smith’s Theory of the State:

The Implications of Military Competition for State Capacity”

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International security in a competitive militarized environment requires that states have the capacity to defend themselves. The effects of this competition can be summarized with an equilibrium-comparative statics logic: (i) at any given moment in time, for a type of state to survive, it must have the financial, material, organizational, and military means to defend itself against other states with possibly different forms of government and territorial organization. (ii) As the nature of military (and financial and organizational) competition changes, so too does the form of the state.

Adam Smith appeals to this logic again and again in his corpus to explain why, in a particular era, one type of state out-competes another. For example, Smith uses this logic to explain the equilibrium structure of feudalism; how the trading towns emerged to out-compete locally feudalism’s military organization; that the town’s militias later proved no match for the professional standing armies of authoritarian monarchies; and how intense military competition for markets and territory around the world led large nation-states to foster forms of liberty or limited government so as to grow and finance longer and larger wars.

5. “Adam Smith’s Industrial Organization of Religion:

Explaining the Medieval Church’s Monopoly And its

Breakdown in the Reformation.”

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Adam Smith argued that, because it was the monopoly provider of religious services, the medieval Church represented a formidable impediment to economic development. How did the Church maintain its monopoly; and how did that monopoly break down in the Reformation? Further, how did the Church maintain its power given that the secular lords had a substantial comparative advantage in violence relative to the Church?

To address these and other questions, Smith developed a rich and systematic approach to the incentives, institutions, and competition surrounding the medieval Church. For example, in answer to the question about the relationship between the secular and ecclesiastic lords, Smith discusses a third group, the masses. According to Smith, the secular lords could not pacify the masses on their own, while the Church could. The ability to influence the masses granted the Church a credible threat over the secular lords: were the lords to attempt to appropriate some of the Church’s revenue, assets, and control, the Church and the masses would turn against them. The secular and ecclesiastic elites therefore had incentives to cooperate to exploit the masses.

To maintain this equilibrium, the Church had to prevent economic growth. Growth would have granted the masses wealth, power, and independence, undermining the Church’s ability to mobilize the masses in times of threat from the secular lords. The Church’s policies suppressed liberty and equality.

As to the Reformation, Smith argued that the masses gradually became less dependent on the Church. Independence meant that the masses were less responsive to the Church’s influence. This change, in turn, diminished the Church’s credible threat over the secular lords, allowing the lords to force considerable concessions from the Church or to remove the Church altogether in favor of newly established sects.

6. “Persistent Inefficiency: Adam Smith’s Theory

of Slavery and its Abolition in Western Europe”

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Why does slavery persist throughout the world, especially when – according to Adam Smith – it is so inefficient? His analysis implies that the net product under freedom is 12 times larger than under slavery. Smith’s account therefore raises a puzzle: if elites – at once owning slaves and holding political control – could be much better off by ending slavery, why did they fail to free their slaves?

Smith proposes two very different answers to this puzzle, both in the same long paragraph. The first explanation is psychological. Smith asserts that people desire to dominate others, and slavery provided the opportunity for slaveholding elites to indulge this desire. The first explanation is by far the more commonly advanced in the literature (see, for example, Brown 2010, Griswold 1999,199-201; and Pack 1991,130-31;1996). Yet nowhere else does Smith use the assumption of domination. In Smith’s understanding of science, this explanation is therefore ad hoc.[4]

I favor instead Smith’s second and lesser known explanation. This argument, appearing on the page following the first explanation, involves commitment problems. Given that freeing the slaves would deprive slaveholders of their property, how would they be compensated were they to free their slaves? In principle, a long-term compensation scheme could solve this problem. But in the undeveloped societies Smith discusses (such as feudal Europe), long-term contracts were difficult to enforce. Indeed, I show that both parties to a compensation scheme had incentives to dishonor a long-term contract for compensated emancipation.

In the presence of commitment problems, slave masters could not be assured they would, in fact, be better off freeing their slaves. Slaveholders therefore rationally avoided emancipation. Smith, the so-called father of economics, provides here a political and legal argument for the failure of a more efficient system of labor markets to emerge.

7. “The Medieval Expansion of Long-Distance Trade: Adam Smith on the Town’s Escape

from the Violent and Low-Growth Feudal Equilibrium,” in Eric Brousseau, ed.,

The Oxford Handbook of Institutions, International Economic Governance and Market

Regulation. Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming, 2023).

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This paper expands on an aspect of Discussion Draft (3) above, “Adam Smith’s Theory of Violence and the Political Economics of Development.” Most people in medieval Europe lived at subsistence in a violent feudal world. Adam Smith explained both the long-term stability of the feudal system and how the towns escaped this violence trap through political exchange that fostered their ability to enter long-distance trade, significant division of labor, and economic growth and development. Violence is central to Smith’s approach to development, which Smith scholars have systematically under-appreciated. In the face of episodic violence, individuals had little incentives to be industrious, to save, or to invest. Smith argued that the medieval towns escaped the violence trap through trade expansion. In Smith’s view, development required three mutually reinforcing elements – law and liberty; commerce, including long-distance trade; and security from all forms of violence.

8. “Adam Smith’s Constitutional Theory”

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To become an engine of sustained economic growth, markets require various market-supporting infrastructure from the government, such as justice (including property rights and contract enforcement), security, public goods, and, importantly, liberty or the freedom from government predation. Adam Smith’s developed his constitutional theory as part of his unpublished Lectures on Jurisprudence. This theory answers a critical question. If liberty, commerce, and security provide the road to opulence, what incentives do political officials have to sustain them? Smith’s constitutional theory provides the answer.

Despite several excellent treatments (see, e.g., Evensky 2005, Haakonssen 1981; Hont 2015; Kennedy 2005, and Winch 1978), Smith’s constitutional theory remains relatively unknown, especially outside of the literature on Smith. Smith’s impressive contributions to this theory parallel those of Locke in his Second Treatise (1689), Montesquieu in his Spirit of the Law (1748), and Madison in the Federalist Papers (1787-88). In many ways, Smith’s focus on institutions and incentives is superior to that of the other political theorists who are far more well-known for work on this topic. Topics include Smith’s theory of sovereignty, the separation of powers as a system of mutual monitors, the right of resistance, and, generally, the incentives facing political officials to adhere to the constitutional rules.

9. “War, Trade, and Mercantilism: Reconciling

Adam Smith’s Three Theories of the British Empire”

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Adam Smith proposed two contradictory theories of the British Empire in the Wealth of Nations and hinted at a third. The first view holds that the empire was created for merchants eager to establish monopolies on the colonial trade. Smith concludes that “Great Britain derives nothing but loss” from the colonies. In the second view, Smith celebrates the European discovery of the new world, opening up vast increases in division of labor, specialization and exchange. The empire thus fostered the economic growth of both sides of the British Atlantic, net of the costs of monopoly. Smith’s third argument is the least developed. It holds that many mercantile restrictions had a direct purpose in improving Britain’s security given its more than century-long military conflict with France.

How do we reconcile the incompatibility of Smith’s three views of the British Empire? Smith provides too little guidance. I argue that, to understand the British Empire, we must view it from the perspective of a long-term, multi-generational military rivalry with France. Many of the navigation regulations were designed to advantage Britain vis-a-vis France. Smith argues, for example, that the harm to France from prohibiting trade in military stores more than compensated for the loss in wealth due to the restrictions. I demonstrate the logic of these claims using tools from modern political science.

1.2 Short Papers and Notes

Three short papers and notes

1. “The Many, Diverse “Main Points”

of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations”

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The purpose of this short paper is to demonstrate that in the modern era Adam Smith scholars make a surprising variety of claims about the “main point” of the Wealth of Nations. I collect a range of statements asserting the main point and arrange them by categories. More than a third of the statements in the literature argue that Wealth of Nations‘ main purpose was to provide a theory of economic development. Other categories include the idea that self-interested individuals can support gains from cooperation; ideas about justice, morals, and liberty; and finally, contributions to economic theory.

The diversity of points is striking, indicating not only the work’s richness but the many different topics to which it made substantive contributions. An obvious interpretation of these results is that no single, over-arching theme can be said to be the purpose or main point of the Wealth of Nations. This work made so many fundamental or foundational contributions to economics, government, history, law, politics, sociology, and normative political theory that it is difficult to say that any one contribution dominates.

2. “How Adam Smith Negotiated with Oxford to Secure His Release

from His Obligation to Become a Minister: A Game-Theoretic Account.”

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At age 17, Adam Smith accepted a Snell Fellowship to Oxford, agreeing to be ordained as a minister of the Church of England. Smith did not fulfill this obligation. Instead, Oxford officials agreed to allow him to transfer from the Ordination to the civil law tract; and, later, to leave Oxford early on a “compassionate leave.” Undoubtedly, Smith’s life and writings would have considerably differed had he adhered to the terms of the Fellowship. How did this agreement come about? This accommodation is all the more puzzling given that Oxford discriminated against the Scots.

Until recently, Smith’s biographers have not attended to this issue. In his new book, An Authentic Account of Adam Smith, Gavin Kennedy (2017) provides an answer. Balliol College at Oxford, which housed the Snell Fellows, captured a major portion of each Fellow’s scholarship. Were Smith to abandon Oxford, Balliol would lose their portion of the funds allocated to Smith. Hence the college officials had an incentive to make an agreement with Smith in a manner that maintained the flow of funds. To do so, they had to make accommodations with Smith. The purpose of this note is to provide a simple game theoretic exposition of Kennedy’s answer. This approach highlights both the strategic setting facing the bargaining parties as well as the gains from exchange.

3. “Inventive Retaliation: Adam Smith,

David Laitin, and the Costs of Sustaining Social Norms”

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Maintaining social norms often requires that members of a community to undertake costly punishment. Under what circumstances is it rational for members to bear this cost? Laitin emphasizes some people invent clever retaliations so as to be admired for doing so (personal communications). The purpose of this note is to provide an answer by drawing on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) to develop a framework in which clever retaliation is a rational response for some when others have violated social norms. Smith’s approach suggests a way of modeling the phenomenon identified by Laitin.

1.3. Work in Progress: Projected Papers

I have sketched a variety of additional papers on Smith’s jurisprudence, some of which I hope to write and combine with the existing papers into a larger, integrated work. I plan to complete first drafts of the first two papers in the coming months. N.B., a “*” at the end of the title indicates that I’m highly likely to complete the paper.

The Emergence of liberty in England: Or, the double origins of parliament – first, as an authoritarian leader’s council; and, later, as the champion of liberty.* Smith defined liberty to include contractual freedom and enforcement, secure rights, and, generally, the absence of predatory behavior of government. As Smith explained in Book III of the Wealth of Nations, liberty in this sense was central to the political-economics of development. In his Lectures on Jurisprudence, Smith addressed three interrelated questions about Parliament and liberty: Why did Parliament emerge in the Middle Ages and how did it constrain the King? Why did Parliament become less of a constraint on the Tudors? And how did Parliament come to be the force for establishing liberty in the 17th century, particularly during and following the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89? Smith proposed a theory to explain these three phases in the role of parliament since the early Middle Ages. The approach rests on two ideas; first, the vicissitudes of relative power of the king vs. the elite; and second, the changing nature of the elite. Changes in these two dimensions, Smith argues, result in changes in political outcomes, such as the power of Parliament. In the first phase, the noble’s powers were high, and Parliament – thought of as an authoritarian’s council – helped constrain the king. Over time, in part due to very bloody civil wars, the king gained power relative to the nobles. Finally, financial problems emerged at the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, plaguing the new Stuart kings and granting Parliament significant power relative to the king. Moreover, the power of Parliament and the constituency supporting liberty grew significantly over the 17th century, eventually forcing James II, the last Stuart, from the throne in the Glorious Revolution (1688). The new institutional changes during this revolution produce liberty, at least for the elite. As with Smith’s arguments about the rise of towns promoting liberty (see paper (2) above), liberty emerged in England when a powerful group favored this goal and was willing to defend it. Parliament emerged as powerful in the 17th century. The steady growth of commerce implied the steady growth of the power of many members of Parliament and the people they represented.

The surprising and largely unrecognized role of violence in Adam Smith’s theories and historical jurisprudence. Violence is a major component of Smith’s analysis of the feudal equilibrium; the role of the medieval Church; the four stages theory; slavery; the emergence of constitutional principles, including the right of resistance to constitutional transgressions; Great Britain and its North America colonies; and the duties of government, including Smith’s evaluation of the virtues and liabilities of a standing army.

Smith’ theory of the state, including the growth of state-capacity.* Smith sought to understand not only the normative role of the state, but a positive understanding of how such an ideal state – or as nearly so as possible – emerged in practice. Specifically, he sought to understand how in practice a state emerged that provided market-supporting infrastructure of secure property rights, contract enforcement, justice, and security from violence.

Adam Smith, natural states, and the role of government. A new interpretation of Smith’s famous phrase, phrase about “peace, easy taxes, and justice.” England under the Tudors did not possess a developed, competitive market economy. As with most developing nations today, the state controlled a great many markets and limited competitive entry in many activities. Using the North, Wallis, and Weingast’s (2009, chs 2-3) approach to the natural state, I show that Smith’s statements on the role of government have a different interpretation than of the common approach to “market intervention” of neoclassical economics.

An analysis of Smith’s famous “four stages theory” of political-economic development: Smith’s views about why various institutions in history remain stable in some periods and why they change in others, including

The mode of economic production;

Family structure;

Government, law, and property rights.

An NPPT (normative and positive political theory) approach to justice in Smith’s work.

A second methodological paper. In parallel with the methodological paper (listed above under Working Papers) on equilibrium and comparative statics, I have planned one that focuses on the dynamical elements in Smith’s approach.

An overall view of Smith’s jurisprudence.*

References

Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2006. “Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective” American Political Science Rev. 100(1): 115-31.

Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Crown Business.

Anderson, Gary M. 1988. “Mr. Smith and the Preachers: The Economics of Religion in the Wealth of Nations,” Journal of Political Economy. 96(5): 1066-88.

Aspromourgos, Tony. 2009. The Science of Wealth: Adam Smith and the Framing of Political Economy. London: Routledge.

Vincent Bevilacqua. 1965. “Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres” in Studies in Scottish Literature. (July) 3: 41-60.

Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson. 2011. Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Blaug, Mark. (1992) The Methodology of Economics: Or How Economists Explain. 2 ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, Marvin. 2010. “Free Enterprise and the Economics of Slavery.” Real-World Economics Review. 52: 28-39.

Brown, Vivienne. 1994. Adam Smith’s Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce and Conscience. London: Routledge.

Buchanan, James M. 2008. “Let Us Understand Adam Smith,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought. 30(1):21-8.

Ekelund, Robert B., Jr., and Robert F. Hébert. (2007) A History of Economic Theory and Method. 5th ed. Long Grove, Ill: Waveland Press, Inc.

Ekelund, Robert B., Jr., Robert F. Hébert, and Robert D. Tollison. 2006. The Marketplace of Christianity. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.

Evensky, Jerry. 2005 Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy: A Historical and Contemporary Perspective on Markets, Law, Ethics, and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Evensky, Jerry. 2015. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: A Reader’s Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fitzgibbons, Athol. 1995. Adam Smith’s System of Liberty, Wealth, and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of the Wealth of Nations. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Fleischacker, Samuel. 2004. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Foley, Vernard. 1976. The Social Physics of Adam Smith. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press.

Friedman, Milton. **

Griswold, Charles L., Jr. 1999. Adam Smith and the Virtues of the Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haakonssen, Knud. 1981. The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Herzog, Lisa. 2013. Inventing the Market: Smith, Hegel, and Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Henderson, Willie. 2006. Evaluating Adam Smith: Creating the Wealth of Nations. London: Routledge.

Hont, Istvan. 2015. Politics in Commercial Society: Jean Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith. Béla Kapossy and Michael Sonenscher, eds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Howell, Wilbur Samuel. 1975. [1969] “Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric: An Historical Assessment,” reprinted in Andrew S. Skinner and Thomas Wilson, eds. Essays on Adam Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hume, David. 1741 [1985]. “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science,” in Eugene F. Miller, ed., David Hume: Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Indianapolis: Liberty Press.

Kennedy, Gavin. 2005. Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kennedy, Gavin. 2010. Adam Smith. 2e. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

Klein, Daniel B. 2012. Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen. 2016a. “The great enrichment: a humanistic and social scientific account” Scandinavian Economic History Review. 64(1): 6–18.

McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen. 2016b. Bourgeois Equality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

McKenna, Stephen J. 2006. Adam Smith: The Rhetoric of Propriety. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.

McLean, Iain. 2006. Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian: An Interpretation for the Twenty-First Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Milgate, Murray, and Shannon Stimson. 2009. After Adam Smith: A Century of Transformation in Politics and Political Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Millar, John. 1787[1803]. An Historical View of the English Government, From the Settlement of the Saxons in Britain to the Revolution in 1688. Mark Salber Phillips and Dale R. Smith, eds. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Moss, Laurence. 1979. “Power and Value Relationships in the Wealth of Nations” in Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr., ed., Adam Smith and Modern Political Economy: Bicentennial Essays on the Wealth of Nations Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press.

North, Douglass C. 1981. Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: W.W. Norton.

North, Douglass C., John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast 2009; Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen. 2016a. “The Great Enrichment: A Humanistic and Social Scientific Account” Scandinavian Economic History Review. 64(1): 6–18.

McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen. 2016b. Bourgeois Equality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Otteson, James. 2011. Adam Smith. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.

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Pack, Spencer J. 1996. “Slavery, Adam Smith’s Economic Vision, and the Invisible hand,” History of Economic Ideas 4: 253-69.

Parker, Noel. 1995. “Look, No Hidden Hands: How Smith Understands Historical Progress and Societal Value,” in Stephen Copley and Kathryn Sutherland, eds., Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: New Interpretive Essays. Manchester: University of Manchester Press.

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Roland, Gerard. 2000. Transition and Economics: Politics, Markets, and Firms. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.

Shleifer, Andrei, and Robert W. Vishny, The Grabbing Hand: Government Pathologies and Their Cures. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

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Skinner, Andrew S. 1977. “Adam Smith and the American Revolution” Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 7(2/3): 75-87.

Smith, Adam. 1762-63; 1763-64(1767)[1981]. Lectures on Jurisprudence. R. L. Meek., D.D. Raphael, and P.G. Stein, eds. Indianapolis: LibertyFund.

Smith, Adam. 1776 [1981]. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 2 vols. R.H. Campbell, A.S. Skinner, and W.B. Todd, eds., Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Smith, Adam. 1788[1987]. Thoughts on the State of the Contest with America, Appendix B, Correspondence of Adam Smith ed. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross, vol. VI of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund

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Smith, Craig. 2006. Adam Smith’s Political Philosophy: The Invisible Hand and Spontaneous Order. London: Routledge.

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Stewart, Dugald. 1793[1982]. Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, LL.D. From the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (edited by I.S. Ross) in W.P.D. Wightman and J.C. Bryce, eds, Adam Smith: Essays on Philosophical Subjects. Indianapolis: LibertyClassics.

Weingast, Barry R. 1995. “The Economic Role of Political Institutions: Market-Preserving Federalism and Economic Development.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization (Spring) 11: 1-31.

Weingast, Barry R. 2016. “Exposing the Neoclassical Fallacy: McCloskey on Ideas and the Great Enrichment,” Scandinavian Economic History Review. 64:3, 189-201.

Winch, Donald. 1978. Adam Smith’s Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Winch, Donald. 1983. “Adam Smith’s ‘Enduring Particular Result’: A Political and Cosmopolitan Perspective,” in Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Endnotes

[1] Others make the same observation. For example, Morrow (1927:322) writes. How absurd to think of the author of the Wealth of Nations as interested only in the wealth of nations! Adam Smith’s great work is more than a treatise on economics; it is a philosophical work, in that sense of the word “philosophy” which has almost passed out of usage in the last hundred years. It is a philosophical work in that it deals with broad problems of human welfare, and deals with them in a reasoned and unprejudiced manner.”

[2] As John Millar, a student and colleague of Smith’s, observed in 1778, “The great Montesquieu pointed out the road. He was the Lord Bacon in this branch of philosophy. Dr. Smith is the Newton” (Millar, 1803:footnote *.II.X:404). In reference to the Wealth of Nations, Skinner (1977: 77) observes that “Economics was conceived in the image of Newton so that Smith would have thoroughly appreciated the eighteenth century assessment of his work, as embodying: ‘an institute of the Principia of those laws of motion, by which the operations of the community are directed and regulated, and by which they should be examined’” (quoting a Letter from Governor Pownall to Adam Smith, 1776). See also Evensky (2005:5), Foley (1976:**), and Herzog (2013:22-23) .

[3] As I raise in “The Economic Role of Political Institutions” (Weingast 1995) the “fundamental economic dilemma of political institutions.” The dilemma is that any state strong enough to protect property rights, enforce contracts, and provide justice is also strong enough to confiscate the property of its citizens. So what determines when the state does one or the other? Scholars in the new literature on the political-economics of development have begun to study the issues of market infrastructure, including: Acemoglu and Robinson (2006,2012), Besley and Persson (2009), Dixit (2004), Roland (2000), and Shleifer and Vishny (1998).

[4] Smith did not use the term political science, preferring instead to use the label, the “science of legislation” (see Haakonssen 1981). But a great many of Smith’s forebears and contemporaries used this phrase; including Stewart (1794,**) of Smith. According to Page Smith (1978:40), “After Newton, the ‘mechanics’ or ‘science’ of politics came to be spoken of commonly as thought the right social and political arrangements of men must have their own laws of gravitation.” Many point to Montesquieu as having modernized political science, after Machiavelli. Smith’s great friend, David Hume (1741), also used this term; for example, in his essay, “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science.”

[5] I draw on a range of studies of this topic, including Aspromourgos (2009,ch5), Evensky (2015,ch 3), Fitzbiggons (1995,chs2&7), Haakonssen (1981,ch5,section 6), Henderson (2006,chs 7-8), Hont (2015), Kennedy (2005,chs 16-29), Kennedy (2010,chs 5,8,&9), McCloskey (2016a,b), Moss (1979), Pack (1991,ch 7), C. Smith (2006,chs 4&8), Skinner (1975), Winch (1978,ch4).

[6] See, for example, Haakonssen (1983,**), Kennedy (2005**) and Winch (1978**) on Smith’s constitutional theory; Minowitz (1991**) and ** on Smith’s theory of the medieval Church; Pack (1996) and *** on slavery; Aspromourgos (200*,ch5), Hont (2015**) Kennedy (2005**), Skinner (1975), and Winch (1978) Smith’s explanation for the stability of the low-growth feudal era and how the towns escaped from this world.

[7] This claim holds with respect to his positive approach to jurisprudence. Several scholars focus on Smith’s normative approach to jurisprudence (see, e.g., Fleischacker 2004 and Griswold 1999). I take no stand on the question whether Smith sought a normative theory largely absent from his work on jurisprudence. Wholly apart from that question, my work demonstrates that Smith had extensive and deep positive theories of jurisprudence.

[1] This first point has an implication for the literature studying Smith’s rhetoric (e.g., Bevilaqua 1965, Brown 1994, Howell 1975, McKenna 2006). Smith’s nearly ubiquitous use of equilibrium and comparative statics methods gives us insights into Smith’s views on explanation and science more generally. Further, these methods are part of the way he structures so many of his discussions to persuade. As noted in many of the discussion drafts, it is easy to miss the theoretical structure underlying many of Smith’s historical discussions. At first, these discussions appear as narratives. Failing to see the underlying theoretical structure of Smith’s discussionss, a great many economists fail to appreciate the lessons in Smith’s jurisprudence.

[2] In discussing Smith’s system of the “three-dimensional structures of social, political, and economic institutions,” Evensky (2005:26,27) observes that sustainable change in any one dimension requires a complementary and consistent change in the other two.”

[3] This assertion closely parallel’s McCloskey’s (2016a,b) view that the ideas of liberty and equality account for the great enrichment that occurred after 1800. Liberty and commerce require rule of law, in turn requiring equality.

[4] In Lecture 24 of his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Smith distinguishes between the approaches of Aristotle, who poses a new principle to explain each new phenomenon, and Newton, who poses a few principles to explain many phenomena. Smith calls the latter, science (LRBL II.132-34, Lecture 24: 145-46). By this definition, Smith’s psychological argument is unscientific.