Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1017/s1053837222000475
S. Skwire
The works of Adam Smith are filled with quotable moments. The pin factory. The poor man’s son. The invisible hand. The butcher, the brewer, and the baker. The dog and the philosopher. The impartial spectator. The man of system and his chessboard. And our propensity to truck, barter, and exchange. All of these are so well known and so often quoted that I’ve had editors ask me just to refer to them in passing rather than quoting them in full.
{"title":"SMITH AT 300: A VIOLENT FIT OF LAZINESS","authors":"S. Skwire","doi":"10.1017/s1053837222000475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1053837222000475","url":null,"abstract":"The works of Adam Smith are filled with quotable moments. The pin factory. The poor man’s son. The invisible hand. The butcher, the brewer, and the baker. The dog and the philosopher. The impartial spectator. The man of system and his chessboard. And our propensity to truck, barter, and exchange. All of these are so well known and so often quoted that I’ve had editors ask me just to refer to them in passing rather than quoting them in full.","PeriodicalId":45456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Economic Thought","volume":"45 1","pages":"182 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46585270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1017/S1053837222000062
N. Curott, Nicholas A. Snow
In this paper we argue that Irving Fisher (1867–1947) is an unacknowledged pioneer of modern behavioral economics. Fisher’s behavioralist orientation is evident in his writings on alcohol prohibition. In these works, Fisher argued that behavioral anomalies prevent individuals from making rational choices regarding alcohol consumption. Fisher thought these anomalies arose from three sources: 1) incomplete information; 2) limited cognitive abilities; and 3) lack of willpower. These are essentially the same barriers to rational choice identified by modern-day New Paternalists. Therefore, we argue that Fisher’s work on Prohibition was a pioneering academic achievement that anticipated recent developments in economics, and not an unscientific diatribe, as previous commentators have presumed. Unlike modern-day ‘New Paternalists,’ however, Fisher rejected minor alterations to the choice architecture and advocated outright prohibition instead. This helps to illustrate a potential slippery-slope problem with modern New Paternalist arguments that should be addressed.
{"title":"NUDGING TO PROHIBITION? A REASSESSMENT OF IRVING FISHER’S ECONOMICS OF PROHIBITION IN LIGHT OF MODERN BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS","authors":"N. Curott, Nicholas A. Snow","doi":"10.1017/S1053837222000062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1053837222000062","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we argue that Irving Fisher (1867–1947) is an unacknowledged pioneer of modern behavioral economics. Fisher’s behavioralist orientation is evident in his writings on alcohol prohibition. In these works, Fisher argued that behavioral anomalies prevent individuals from making rational choices regarding alcohol consumption. Fisher thought these anomalies arose from three sources: 1) incomplete information; 2) limited cognitive abilities; and 3) lack of willpower. These are essentially the same barriers to rational choice identified by modern-day New Paternalists. Therefore, we argue that Fisher’s work on Prohibition was a pioneering academic achievement that anticipated recent developments in economics, and not an unscientific diatribe, as previous commentators have presumed. Unlike modern-day ‘New Paternalists,’ however, Fisher rejected minor alterations to the choice architecture and advocated outright prohibition instead. This helps to illustrate a potential slippery-slope problem with modern New Paternalist arguments that should be addressed.","PeriodicalId":45456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Economic Thought","volume":"45 1","pages":"117 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48603638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1017/s1053837223000081
{"title":"HET volume 45 issue 1 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1053837223000081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1053837223000081","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Economic Thought","volume":"45 1","pages":"f1 - f4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41371109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-28DOI: 10.1017/S1053837222000578
E. Rothschild
This observation is from an obscure backwater of the Wealth of Nations. It is about companies that were archaic even in 1776: the Russian Company, the Eastland Company, the Hamburgh Company, chartered in Britain in the sixteenth century, and trading mainly in the Baltic. But the comments on regulated companies are a revealing epitome of Adam Smith’s thought. There is the artful language, and one can almost hear Smith’s ironic tone as he dictated these sentences. There is the analytic idiom, so characteristic of the Wealth of Nations, in the juxtaposition of large theories with the details of legal and economic history. There is, above all, the subject, which is also the largest object of inquiry in the Wealth of Nations, or the changing relationship between states and markets.
{"title":"SMITH AT 300: USELESS COMPANIES","authors":"E. Rothschild","doi":"10.1017/S1053837222000578","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1053837222000578","url":null,"abstract":"This observation is from an obscure backwater of the Wealth of Nations. It is about companies that were archaic even in 1776: the Russian Company, the Eastland Company, the Hamburgh Company, chartered in Britain in the sixteenth century, and trading mainly in the Baltic. But the comments on regulated companies are a revealing epitome of Adam Smith’s thought. There is the artful language, and one can almost hear Smith’s ironic tone as he dictated these sentences. There is the analytic idiom, so characteristic of the Wealth of Nations, in the juxtaposition of large theories with the details of legal and economic history. There is, above all, the subject, which is also the largest object of inquiry in the Wealth of Nations, or the changing relationship between states and markets.","PeriodicalId":45456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Economic Thought","volume":"45 1","pages":"208 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44635181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-28DOI: 10.1017/S1053837222000748
M. Carrasco
Adam Smith is known as a liberal thinker. The political system that he promotes and describes as one of “perfect justice, perfect liberty, and perfect equality” (Wealth of Nations [1776] 1981; WN IV.ix.17:669) is characterized by the primacy of the rights of non-interference and the protection of a private sphere where every individual directs her life according to her own decisions. The moral justification for the primacy of negative justice is in the second book of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he unambiguously states: “Mere justice is, upon most occasions, but a negative virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbor” ([1759] 1982; TMS II.i.1.9:82). For the same reason, the first time I read that book, the following paragraph struck me as an inexplicable contradiction, an incomprehensible lapse in Adam Smith’s thoroughly revised text: A superior may, indeed, sometimes, with universal approbation, oblige those under his jurisdiction to behave, in this respect, with a certain degree of propriety to one another. … The civil magistrate is entrusted with the power not only of preserving the public peace by restraining injustice, but of promoting the prosperity of the commonwealth, by establishing good discipline, and by discouraging every sort of vice and impropriety; he may prescribe rules, therefore, which not only prohibit mutual injuries among fellow-citizens, but command mutual good offices to a certain degree. … Of all the duties of a law-giver, however, this, perhaps, is that which it requires the greatest delicacy and reserve to execute with propriety and judgment. To neglect it altogether exposes the commonwealth to many gross disorders and shocking enormities, and to push it too far is destructive of all liberty, security, and justice. (TMS II.ii.1.8)
{"title":"SMITH AT 300: NEGATIVE JUSTICE AND POLITICAL WISDOM","authors":"M. Carrasco","doi":"10.1017/S1053837222000748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1053837222000748","url":null,"abstract":"Adam Smith is known as a liberal thinker. The political system that he promotes and describes as one of “perfect justice, perfect liberty, and perfect equality” (Wealth of Nations [1776] 1981; WN IV.ix.17:669) is characterized by the primacy of the rights of non-interference and the protection of a private sphere where every individual directs her life according to her own decisions. The moral justification for the primacy of negative justice is in the second book of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he unambiguously states: “Mere justice is, upon most occasions, but a negative virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbor” ([1759] 1982; TMS II.i.1.9:82). For the same reason, the first time I read that book, the following paragraph struck me as an inexplicable contradiction, an incomprehensible lapse in Adam Smith’s thoroughly revised text: A superior may, indeed, sometimes, with universal approbation, oblige those under his jurisdiction to behave, in this respect, with a certain degree of propriety to one another. … The civil magistrate is entrusted with the power not only of preserving the public peace by restraining injustice, but of promoting the prosperity of the commonwealth, by establishing good discipline, and by discouraging every sort of vice and impropriety; he may prescribe rules, therefore, which not only prohibit mutual injuries among fellow-citizens, but command mutual good offices to a certain degree. … Of all the duties of a law-giver, however, this, perhaps, is that which it requires the greatest delicacy and reserve to execute with propriety and judgment. To neglect it altogether exposes the commonwealth to many gross disorders and shocking enormities, and to push it too far is destructive of all liberty, security, and justice. (TMS II.ii.1.8)","PeriodicalId":45456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Economic Thought","volume":"45 1","pages":"201 - 203"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42002520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-28DOI: 10.1017/s1053837222000347
J. Wible
{"title":"Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist Who Unmade Economics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020), pp. 504, $41 (hardcover). ISBN: 9780674659728.","authors":"J. Wible","doi":"10.1017/s1053837222000347","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1053837222000347","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Economic Thought","volume":"45 1","pages":"527 - 532"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44547109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-28DOI: 10.1017/S1053837222000700
M. Boumans
I wrote this address during the first weeks of the murderous and devastating invasion of Russia in Ukraine, in a fluctuating mood of anger and sadness. My aim was addressing the issue of the use of history to legitimize ideology, and I was contemplating how I could convince you of the urgency of this issue, and then this war broke out.
{"title":"2022 HES PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: THE HISTORY OF ECONOMICS AS ECONOMIC SELF-PORTRAITURE","authors":"M. Boumans","doi":"10.1017/S1053837222000700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1053837222000700","url":null,"abstract":"I wrote this address during the first weeks of the murderous and devastating invasion of Russia in Ukraine, in a fluctuating mood of anger and sadness. My aim was addressing the issue of the use of history to legitimize ideology, and I was contemplating how I could convince you of the urgency of this issue, and then this war broke out.","PeriodicalId":45456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Economic Thought","volume":"45 1","pages":"367 - 383"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48812461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-27DOI: 10.1017/S1053837222000451
Scott Drylie
Adam Smith’s excellence in the art of belles lettres is well known and is on vivid display in his most memorable quotes, enriching his arguments and augmenting their impact. Sometimes, however, the effects of time obscure his artistry and purpose. The following passage from the Wealth of Nations ([1776] 1981; WN) is one such example. It contains an overlooked expression of Smith’s liberal vision and serves to encourage further exploration of the relationship between form and substance in his writing.
{"title":"SMITH AT 300: MEN OF BLESSED AND BEGUILING INGENUITY","authors":"Scott Drylie","doi":"10.1017/S1053837222000451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1053837222000451","url":null,"abstract":"Adam Smith’s excellence in the art of belles lettres is well known and is on vivid display in his most memorable quotes, enriching his arguments and augmenting their impact. Sometimes, however, the effects of time obscure his artistry and purpose. The following passage from the Wealth of Nations ([1776] 1981; WN) is one such example. It contains an overlooked expression of Smith’s liberal vision and serves to encourage further exploration of the relationship between form and substance in his writing.","PeriodicalId":45456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Economic Thought","volume":"45 1","pages":"226 - 228"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45835529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-27DOI: 10.1017/S1053837222000530
Sheila Dow
“We need not be surprised … that the Cartesian philosophy …, though it does not perhaps contain a word of truth, … should nevertheless have been so universally received by all the Learned in Europe at that time. … [They] greedily receive[d] a work which we justly esteem one of the most entertaining Romances that has ever been wrote.” LRBL ii.134
{"title":"SMITH AT 300: ADAM SMITH ON RHETORIC AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE","authors":"Sheila Dow","doi":"10.1017/S1053837222000530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1053837222000530","url":null,"abstract":"“We need not be surprised … that the Cartesian philosophy …, though it does not perhaps contain a word of truth, … should nevertheless have been so universally received by all the Learned in Europe at that time. … [They] greedily receive[d] a work which we justly esteem one of the most entertaining Romances that has ever been wrote.” LRBL ii.134","PeriodicalId":45456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Economic Thought","volume":"45 1","pages":"187 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48154204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-27DOI: 10.1017/s1053837222000566
Pavel Kuchar
Adam Smith’s views on inequality have recently been examined with some interest (Rasmussen 2016; Walraevens 2021). But was Smith really genuinely interested in addressing the shortcomings of the society built on the “liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice” (Smith 1975, Wealth of Nations; WN IV.ix)? While critical accounts of Smith’s thought may tend to zero in on his concerns with absolute poverty—or the equality in the “share of the necessaries of life” (Smith 1976, Theory of Moral Sentiments; TMS IV.1.10)—rather than economic inequality, they may perhaps also tend to confuse his account of our tendencies to admire the rich and powerful with the advocacy of a system in which the rich and powerful ride roughshod over the poor and disempowered as long as the order of the society founded on the “distinction of ranks” (TMS I.iii.2) is preserved.
{"title":"SMITH AT 300: COMMERCIAL SOCIETY AND THE WOMEN’S QUESTION","authors":"Pavel Kuchar","doi":"10.1017/s1053837222000566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1053837222000566","url":null,"abstract":"Adam Smith’s views on inequality have recently been examined with some interest (Rasmussen 2016; Walraevens 2021). But was Smith really genuinely interested in addressing the shortcomings of the society built on the “liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice” (Smith 1975, Wealth of Nations; WN IV.ix)? While critical accounts of Smith’s thought may tend to zero in on his concerns with absolute poverty—or the equality in the “share of the necessaries of life” (Smith 1976, Theory of Moral Sentiments; TMS IV.1.10)—rather than economic inequality, they may perhaps also tend to confuse his account of our tendencies to admire the rich and powerful with the advocacy of a system in which the rich and powerful ride roughshod over the poor and disempowered as long as the order of the society founded on the “distinction of ranks” (TMS I.iii.2) is preserved.","PeriodicalId":45456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Economic Thought","volume":"45 1","pages":"223 - 225"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47722944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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