Today is Adam Smith’s 301st birthday. Last year, for the tercentenary, we hosted the Adam Smith 300 series for Capital Matters. We got one essay each month from different writers looking at Smith’s life and thought from different perspectives.
I encourage you to celebrate Smith’s birthday today by giving one of those essays a read. Pick one that looks interesting to you:
- “Adam Smith’s Benevolence Puzzle” by Dan Klein and Erik Matson of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
- “Adam Smith: Community Is Based in Beneficence and Justice” by Nobel prize in economics winner Vernon Smith
- “Adam Smith Was an English Teacher First” by English professor Caroline Breashears of St. Lawrence University
- “The Adam Smith Solution” by NR contributing editor Yuval Levin
- “Adam Smith and Edmund Burke: Economic Sympathizers” by Bradley Prize winner Samuel Gregg of the American Institute for Economic Research
- “Adam Smith’s Scottish Teachers, Peers, and Friends” by Craig Smith, the Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in the Scottish Enlightenment at the University of Glasgow
- “Adam Smith’s Presumption for Unilateral Free Trade” by Don Boudreaux of George Mason University
- “What Adam Smith’s Writing on Usury Teaches Us Today” by economics and theology professor Paul Oslington of Alphacrucis University College in Australia
- “Catholic and Smithian” by Catherine Pakaluk of the Catholic University of America
- “We Must Continue to Teach and Learn from Adam Smith” by Anne Bradley of the Fund for American Studies
- “Why Adam Smith Now?” by Ryan Hanley of Boston College
- “Adam Smith, a Roman Emperor, and Slavery” by Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute
You can also read my speech from our Adam Smith 300 conference in New York last year by clicking here.
And be sure to keep an eye out for more Adam Smith content from Capital Matters. The influence of Smith’s thought on free-market economics and on classical liberalism more broadly is hard to overstate, and we remain indebted to his genius.