The Consistency of Adam Smith

Adam Smith , Behavioral

Adam Smith , Behavioral Economist

Adam Smith and Greed

Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist

I n The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, Adam Smith famously argued that economic behavior was motivated by self-interest. But 17 years earlier in 1759, Smith had proposed a theory of human behavior that looks anything but selfinterested. In his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith argued that behavior was determined by the struggle between what Smith termed the “passions” and...

Adam Smith on the Virtues: A Partial Resolution of the Adam Smith Problem

It is now easy to see, in the light of Adam Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence, that The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations were parts of a grand system. Nonetheless, TMS and WTVare not tightly linked. This paper pursues the following strategy: knowing that Smith wrote both works, one can go back to TMS, investigate Smith's handling of the virtues, and see how that work implici...