The Wealth of Nations

Smith was a rather extraordinary man. Born in Kircaldy, County Fife, Scotland in 1723, Smith is characterized by Robert Heilbroner as being an “apt student” (1999). Heilbroner then goes on to recount a story about Smith being kidnapped by gypsies when he was 4. At the age of seventeen, Smith left to study at Oxford. Heilbroner is quick to point out that Oxford at that time was hardly the venerable bastion of learning that it is today and that Smith spent his time there “largely untutored and untaught, reading as he saw fit” (1999). Smith describes Oxford as a “sanctuary in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices find shelter and protection, after they have been hunted out of every other corner of the world” (Herman, 2001). In 1751, Smith became the Chair of Logic at the University of Glasgow, later he would become the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the same institution.

Smith was heavily influenced by his mentor, Francis Hutcheson, and his friend, David Hume. Apparently, Smith was almost expelled from Oxford for having Hume's work in his room (Heilbronner, 1999). And Smith's A Theory of Moral Sentiments is a rework of “Hutcheson's theory of a moral sense” (Herman, 2001). Heilbronner writes about The Wealth of Nations that “there is a long line of observers before Smith who had approached his understanding of the world: Locke, Steuart, Mandeville, Petty, Cantillion, Turgot, not to mention Quesnay and Hume again. Smith took from all of them: there are over a hundred authors mentioned by name in his treatise...The Wealth of Nations is not a wholly original book” (1999). Rima disagrees to some extent saying that it “contains remarkably few references to the writings of other authers and that Smith was perhaps less scholarly in...

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...he demand could be satiated and the natural price restored. For example, if the people want more socks and less dresses, the price of socks would increase as the supply would not be great enough to supply all the socks demanded and the price of dresses would decrease as there are more dresses than what people want. As the price of dresses drops, dress makers employ less people and sock makers employ more people until the number of dresses and socks are sufficient to meet demand. This he describes as the invisible hand.

Works Cited

Heilbroner, Robert L. The Worldly Philosophers: the Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Print.

Herman, Arthur. How the Scots Invented the Modern World. New York: Three Rivers, 2001. Print.

Rima, Ingrid Hahne. Development of Economic Analysis. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. Print.