Adam Smith

A Visit to Morocco

April 30, 2012

On April 19, my wife and I flew to Morocco for the Mont Pelerin Society meetings, the first to take place in an Arab country.  We stayed at the Le Royal Mansour Meridien in downtown Casablanca, a first class hotel with great service, but surrounding the hotel was a lot of dust, litter, and construction.  [...]

Read the full article →

Making of Modern Economics #2 in Ayn Rand Institute’s Top-Ten Must Read Books in Economics

April 7, 2012

Good news.  My book, The Making of Modern Economics, now in its second edition, won recognition from the Ayn Rand Institute, which published its first “top ten must-read books in economics,”  The Making of Modern Economics was ranked second, right behind Henry Hazlitt’s classic Economics in One Lesson. I’m not complaining, since Steve Mariotti, president [...]

Read the full article →

Hillsdale College Lecture: Will the Real Adam Smith Please Stand Up?

February 15, 2012

Was Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, a libertarian, conservative, or radical democrat? Traditionally, free-market economists such as Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, have defended Smith as a great free-market economist, while Emma Rothschild, Gordon Brown, and yes, even Murray Rothbard, have demurred, suggesting that Smith was an interventionist who should [...]

Read the full article →

The Centrality of the Invisible Hand

January 31, 2012

THE CENTRALITY OF THE INVISIBLE HAND By Mark Skousen Lecture, Center for Constructive Alternatives Hillsdale College, January 31, 2012 “Adam Smith had one overwhelmingly important triumph: he put into the center of economics the systematic analysis of the behavior of individuals pursuing their self-interest under conditions of competition.”– George Stigler[1] A major debate has flared [...]

Read the full article →