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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
(Review) Self-Interest Before Adam Smith: A Genealogy Of Economic Science, Spencer J. Pack
(Review) Self-Interest Before Adam Smith: A Genealogy Of Economic Science, Spencer J. Pack
Economics Faculty Publications
Pierre Force, Self-Interest Before Adam Smith: A Genealogy of Economic Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. ix, 279, $65.00. ISBN 0-521 83060-5.
Adam Smith And Greed, Jonathan B. Wight
Adam Smith And Greed, Jonathan B. Wight
Economics Faculty Publications
The virtues of greed have been widely promoted by some economists in the 20th century. Allegedly it is Adam Smith who provides this new dignity to greed (Lerner, 1937, ix). Kenneth Arrow and Frank Hahn in the General Equilibrium Analysis (1971), for example, implicitly assume that Adam Smith's self-interest is the greed that promotes economic efficiency (quoted in Evensky, 1993, 203). Walter Williams (1999), a devoted follower of Smith, writes in his column that, "Free markets, private property rights, voluntary exchange, and greed produce preferable outcomes most times and under most conditions." These pronouncements have become part of the cultural …