The Smithian inheritance

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Chapter 1 in Economists and the State, 2014 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Adam Smith is widely regarded as the ‘founder of modern economics’. The author shows, however, that Smith’s procedurally based, consequence-detached political economy, an approach shared by America’s Founders, finds no expression in the economist’s utilitarian, procedurally-detached theory of the state. This ‘wrong turn’ has meant that, if economists are ill-equipped to address an expanding federal enterprise in which utilitarian considerations trump the Smithian/Madisonian idea that means and ends must be morally and constitutionally constrained, they are also ineffectual bystanders as growing institutional skepticism, demands for ‘social justice’ and metastasizing rights claims threaten our self-governing republic.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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