 Adam Smith and Carl Menger: Who Invented the Invisible Hand?A chapter in 300 Years of Adam Smith, 2024, pp 87-96 from Springer Abstract: Abstract Adam Smith is often said to have used the metaphor of the “invisible hand” to characterize the coordination of the individual interests of members of a society through the market system. This could then lead to the emergence of an order of society that is, in some specific sense, “best” from the point of view of everybody’s interests. We show that this idea is not as essential for Smith’s moral and economic theories as is frequently claimed. Later, conversely, Carl Menger developed an elaborate methodology relating to the concept of the unintended societal consequences of individual actions and interactions as a starting point for a theory of coordination corresponding to the idea of an “invisible hand.” We sketch a research program aiming at a theory of society based on the unexpected and unintended consequences of the individually rational behavior of economic agents based on Menger’s instead of Smith’s theory. Keywords: History of economic thought; Adam Smith; Carl Menger; Invisible hand; Unintended consequences; Origin of institutions; B10; B40; B53; D02 (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:euhchp:978-3-031-63261-7_6 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-63261-7_6 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences from Springer |
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