This paper contributes to the debate over the unity in Smith's corpus by emphasizing Smith's pervasive methodological approach based on an assumption of self-interest. Specifically, Smith consistently relies on equilibrium arguments to explain why a given pattern of economic, political, or...

Open access to labor organizations lagged nearly a century behind open access to business organizations, arising as part of the New Deal in the mid-1930s. During the century previous to the New Deal, firms and governments actively suppressed labor organization, frequently resorting to violence....

In the Athenian law-courts, wealthy, educated, and powerful elites fought one another to prevail as leaders and advisors of the masses. Regulated by the masses' ideals of a good society, elite competition pushed Athens toward stability, prosperity and cultural immortality. Or did it? This...

Most people in medieval Europe lived at subsistence in a violent feudal world. Adam Smith explained both the long-term stability of the feudal system and how the towns escaped this violence trap through political exchange that fostered their ability to enter long-distance trade, significant...