Technological progress and economic analysis from Petty to Smith

Hugh Goodacre

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2010, vol. 17, issue 5, 1149-1168

Abstract: Both William Petty (1623 to 1687) and Adam Smith (1723 to 1790) were concerned with the question of how to increase productivity. In this connection, they both addressed the issues of technological invention and the organisation of the production process, but in very different ways. Petty represents both these aspects of the productivity question as instances of another, conceptually dominant, consideration - the benefits of spatial compactness. Smith, in contrast, subordinates both technical and spatial considerations to the division of labour, thus narrowing the focus onto his central message that productivity can ultimately only proceed in step with the extension of the market.

Keywords: William Petty; Adam Smith; technology; productivity; division of labour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09672567.2010.522240 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:17:y:2010:i:5:p:1149-1168

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REJH20

DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2010.522240

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought is currently edited by José Luís Cardoso

More articles in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().