The Adam Smith Quiz

Adam Smith: The Father of Economics

• Adam Smith was a Scottish economist and philosopher who lived from 1723 to 1790.

• He is considered the Father of Economics and the Father of Capitalism.

• Smith wrote two classic works: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

• The latter is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and an academic discipline.

• Smith developed the concept of division of labor and expounded upon how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity.

• He was controversial in his own day, and his general approach and writing style were often satirized.

• Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford.

• He began delivering public lectures in 1748 at the University of Edinburgh, sponsored by the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh under the patronage of Lord Kames.

• Smith earned a professorship at Glasgow University in 1751 and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759.

• In 1764, Smith resigned from his professorship to take a tutoring position and tour Europe with his student.

• Smith was appointed to a post as commissioner of customs in Scotland in 1778 and occupied the honorary position of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow from 1787 to 1789.

• Smith died in 1790, and his body was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard.The Life and Works of Adam Smith

• Adam Smith was an 18th-century Scottish economist, philosopher, and author of The Wealth of Nations.

• He was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, on June 5, 1723, and died on July 17, 1790.

• Smith studied moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow and later at Balliol College, Oxford.

• He was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1751 to 1764.

• Smith's first published work was The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, which he continued to revise until his death.

• Despite being known for his economic theories, Smith considered The Theory of Moral Sentiments to be his superior work.

• Smith's most influential work, The Wealth of Nations, was published in 1776 and is widely regarded as a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics.

• Smith's central message in The Wealth of Nations was that rational self-interest and competition could lead to economic prosperity.

• Smith believed that the division of labor and competition lead to greater productivity, lower prices, and improved standards of living.

• Smith's legacy includes the decline of mercantilism in Britain in the late 18th century, the embrace of free trade, and the spread of a broadly liberal economic model around the world.

• Smith's religious views are debated, with some scholars arguing that his social and economic philosophy is inherently theological, while others argue that he was a deist or a theist.

• Smith was described by his contemporaries as comically absent-minded, with peculiar habits of speech and gait, and a smile of "inexpressible benignity".Adam Smith: His Life, Work, and Legacy

• Smith's allowance for wage increases in the short and intermediate term from capital accumulation and invention contrasted with Malthus, Ricardo, and Karl Marx in their propounding a rigid subsistence–wage theory of labour supply.

• Joseph Schumpeter criticised Smith for a lack of technical rigour, yet he argued that this enabled Smith's writings to appeal to wider audiences.

• The labour theory of value held that the value of a thing was determined by the labour that went into its production.

• Neoclassical economics systematised supply and demand as joint determinants of price and quantity in market equilibrium, affecting both the allocation of output and the distribution of income.

• Smith was more likely to be represented as the author of both The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and thereby as the founder of a moral philosophy and the science of economics.

• Smith also opposed empire and challenged ideas that colonies were key to British prosperity and power.

• Smith's most prominent disciple in 19th-century Britain, peace advocate Richard Cobden, preferred giving the colonies their independence.

• Smith has been commemorated in the UK on banknotes printed by two different banks.

• Smith has been celebrated by advocates of free-market policies as the founder of free-market economics.

• Smith supported helping infant industries.

• Some have also claimed that Smith would have supported a minimum wage.

• Smith also noted the existence of an imbalanced, inequality of bargaining power.