{"title":"Vanity and Luck in Adam Smith's Economic Growth","authors":"M. Paganelli","doi":"10.1215/00182702-10005732","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n What are the causes of prosperity? In addition to the division of labor, saving, capital accumulation, and good institutions, Adam Smith explains opulence through vanity and luck, two variables we tend to forget today. For Smith, wealth comes from our propensity to better our condition, combined with freedom and the security of the law. The propensity to better our condition is grounded in our vanity and can take the form of both parsimony and prodigality. The laws that guarantee freedom and security seem to be more of an accident of history than deliberate attempts to create prosperity. For Smith, vanity and accidents play a relevant role in economic growth.","PeriodicalId":47043,"journal":{"name":"History of Political Economy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"History of Political Economy","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-10005732","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
What are the causes of prosperity? In addition to the division of labor, saving, capital accumulation, and good institutions, Adam Smith explains opulence through vanity and luck, two variables we tend to forget today. For Smith, wealth comes from our propensity to better our condition, combined with freedom and the security of the law. The propensity to better our condition is grounded in our vanity and can take the form of both parsimony and prodigality. The laws that guarantee freedom and security seem to be more of an accident of history than deliberate attempts to create prosperity. For Smith, vanity and accidents play a relevant role in economic growth.
期刊介绍:
Focusing on the history of economic thought and analysis, History of Political Economy has made significant contributions to the field and remains its foremost means of communication. In addition to book reviews, each issue contains original research on the development of economic thought, the historical background behind major figures in the history of economics, the interpretation of economic theories, and the methodologies available to historians of economic theory. All subscribers to History of Political Economy receive a hardbound annual supplement as part of their subscription.