Document Type
Contribution to Book
Publication Date
2013
Abstract
Adam Smith is often referred to as the father of economics and as a promoter of free markets. In what follows, I let the first claim stand and concentrate on the second: that Adam Smith is a promoter of free markets. In particular, I take for granted, with all the necessary caveats, that Smith is a promoter of free markets (but cf. e.g. Fleischacker 2004 ; McLean 2006 ) and concentrate on how Smith promotes free markets. Smith promotes free markets for at least two reasons: efficiency and morality. There is already a vast and detailed literature on the economic efficiency of the markets Smith describes. Here I focus on the claim that Smith promotes free markets on moral grounds and argues that markets can foster morality just as much as morality can foster markets.
Editor
Christopher J. Berry, Maria Pia Paganelli & Craig Smith
Publisher
Oxford University Press
City
Oxford
ISBN
9780199605064
Repository Citation
Paganelli, M. P. (2013). Commercial relations: From Adam Smith to field experiments. In C. J. Berry, M. P. Paganelli, & C. Smith (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Adam Smith (pp. 333-350). Oxford University Press.
Publication Information
The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith