The new issue of ECO features a timeline of three centuries of economic history from Smith’s birth to today. And we’ve frequently looked back to evidence from past upheavals to see what lessons can be drawn for current policy responses. But we always planned to go on to examine further global challenges: they’ve turned out to include climate change, the cost of living crisis and the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Observatory was originally conceived in 2020 as a way for the UK’s economic research community to answer questions from policy-makers and the public about the economics of the pandemic. But that is not how it worked out in America. Economics should be about understanding the reasons for and doing away with the sordidness and joylessness, Sir Angus said. He closed with a quotation from the pioneering early 20 th century welfare economist Arthur Cecil Pigou, who wrote: ‘It is not wonder, but rather the social enthusiasm which revolts from the sordidness of mean streets and the joylessness of withered lives, that is the beginning of economic science’. Previewing a forthcoming autobiographical book, Economics in America: an immigrant economist explores the land of inequality, Sir Angus painted a bleak picture of the downside of American capitalism in the country’s deep inequalities of wealth, health and wellbeing. Ideas matter.’įinally, economics Nobel laureate Angus Deaton (Princeton University) delivered an address entitled ‘Economic failure or failure of economics’. She talked about why she thinks of Smith as the first true liberal, concluding ‘When all said and done, ideas rule the world. Next up was Deirdre McCloskey (University of Illinois at Chicago and the Cato Institute), who has written widely about economics, history, English and communication, and describes herself as a ‘postmodern, quantitative, literary, ex-Marxist, economist, historian, Episcopalian, coastie-bred Chicagoan but now Washington woman who was once not’. She examined how Smith would have responded to the emergence of artificial intelligence, and then discussed today’s policy challenges around technology, globalisation and international cooperation with BBC Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark. First, Gita Gopinath (first deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund) considered ‘The power and perils of the “artificial” hand’. As he notes in a short ECO piece about Glasgow’s great alumnus, the 300 th birthday has provided an opportunity for economists to re-engage with Smith’s ideas and to reflect on the underlying moral questions that lie at the heart of the big economic challenges we face today.Įarlier in the week, there were three public lectures in Glasgow. Graeme Roy (University of Glasgow), who is one of our lead editors at the Economics Observatory, led the planning for the anniversary and opened a day-long Adam Smith 300 Symposium at the end of the tercentenary week. In the latest issue of ECO magazine, we’ve brought together some of the top scholars who spoke at those celebratory occasions, alongside other experts in economic history, the history of economic thought and the contemporary relevance of Smith’s ideas. Three hundred years later, our friends at the University of Glasgow have been hosting a series of events to mark the tercentenary of his birth. Adam Smith – who is widely thought of as the father of economics – was born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, a small town in Fife, Scotland.
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