Adam Smith

The Making of Modern Economics Wins 2009 Choice Award

January 22, 2010

My book The Making of Modern Economics has just won the Choice Book Award for Outstanding Academic Title for 2009. Choice is the reviewing journal for academic libraries. I was delighted by this surprise announcement, especially for a 2nd edition! Some of the unique characteristics of The Making of Modern Economics: 1. A major critique of Karl Marx’s [...]

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Book Review: The Making of Modern Economics

August 24, 2009

From an online book review on BillyBush.Net: I recently finished “The Making of Modern Economics” by Mark Skousen.  I found this book quite intriguing.  It provides a powerful foundation and historical background to economic thought by offering the histories of the individuals that most contributed to modern schools of economics and public policy. Read more: [...]

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Proof Is in the Dow

March 2, 2009

From Human Events “The Obama budget is nothing less than an attempt to end the ideas of Ronald Reagan.” — New York Times Adam Smith, the father of free-market economics, once stated, “There is much ruin in a nation.”  President Obama is out to prove it in his Newspeak program he calls “A New Era [...]

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It All Started with Adam

May 1, 2001

Ideas On Liberty Economics on Trial May 2001 by Mark Skousen Adam Smith, that is. Having just completed writing a history of economics,1 I have concluded that, despite the protestations of Murray Rothbard and other detractors, the eighteenth-century moral philosopher and celebrated author of The Wealth of Nations deserves to be named the founding father [...]

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The Troubled Economics of Ayn Rand

January 1, 2001

Published in January, 2001, issue of Liberty Magazine: THE TROUBLED ECONOMICS OF AYN RAND by Mark Skousen “No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers…” –Howard Roark, The Fountainhead (1994:710) Ayn Rand, author of the celebrated Capitalism: The Unknown Idea, is honored almost universally as the fountainhead of market capitalism, an impassioned [...]

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Greed Is Good — NOT!

February 1, 2000

Personal Snapshots Forecasts & Strategies, February 2000 Greed is Good — NOT! “Unbridled avarice is not in the least the equivalent of capitalism, still less its ‘spirit.’” — Max Weber Recently I heard free-market economist Walter Williams speak at a local college about capitalism. He quoted approvingly from Gordon Gekko, the fictional character of the [...]

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