Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Negro Science Of Exchange: Classical Economics And Its Chicago Revival, David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

For analytical purposes, are economic agents—humans—the same or not? In this chapter, we argue that, historically, the debate between those who trusted in markets and those who did not followed logically from different answers to this questions. Starting with Adam Smith, classical economists held that humans are the same in their capacity for language and trade. They concluded that since markets are useful for some agents, they are beneficial for all of us. But the supposition of homogeneous competence was widely questioned in the nineteenth century but those who held that significant differences exist among humans, only some of whom …