Adam Smith's ideas
Adam Smith's ideas were at the core of the tercentenary events and activities, to help people understand more deeply the concepts he developed.
Access insights and learning from academics from across the world who examined Smith's ideas in discussions, lectures and articles.
Key works
Adam Smith is best known for three publications: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations, and his incomplete Lectures on Jurisprudence.
Prejudices of the Imagination: What Adam Smith Added to the Enlightenment Project
Professor Samuel Fleischacker discussed how Adam Smith employs techniques to change his readers’ prejudicial image of poor people
Was Adam Smith Really a Right-Winger?
Economists and politicians have turned Smith into a mascot for free-market ideology. Some on the left say that's to misread him. Freakonomics Radio weighs up the arguments.
Adam Smith's ethics: Psychological foundations in sympathy and normative aspirations to impartiality
Professor Christel Fricke, of the University of Oslo, Norway, discussed Smith's sympathetic process and how it provides a framework for developing modern codes of ethics and morality.
Adam Smith's 'Coarse Clay' Political Realism
In this public lecture Professor Ryan Griffiths and the Research Group on Constitutional Studies at McGill University in Canada discussed how we can learn from Smith's work today.
Adam Smith, happiness, welfare and inequality
Professor Lisa Hill, of the University of Adelaide, aregues that Smith was less libertarian and laissez-faire than is commonly allowed but also less progressive than some scholars have suggested.
Smith and immigration
Professor Chandran Kukathas, Dean and Lee Kong Chian Chair Professor of Political Science at the School of Social Sciences at Singapore Management University, discussed the division of labour, the extent of the market and moral development.
Adam Smith: War and the Laws of Nations
Ryan Hanley, Professor of Political Science at Boston College, discussed Adam Smith: War and the Laws of Nations at the University of Tokyo’s Library of Economics Templeton Lecture.
Adam Smith - The first true liberal
In this lecture Professor Deirdre McCloskey, Isaiah Berlin Chair in Liberal Thought at the Cato Institute, Washington, argued that Adam Smith was the first true liberal.
Exploring Adam Smith's ideas and legacy
Podcast discussion with independent scholar Keith Tribe, who spoke at Balliol College, University of Oxford, about the intellectual context in which Adam Smith was working and the dissemination of his ideas.
Are Adam Smith and his ideas misunderstood?
Professor Sam Peltzman, from Chicago Booth University in Boston, reflected on common public misunderstandings of Adam Smith's thinking.
The theoretical legacy of Adam Smith: University of Mexico
Seminar at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Méxic (UNAM) highlighting the usefulness and importance of m Smith ideas for explaining current economic and social problems.
Marking the tercentenary of Adam Smith
In this public lecture by Emeritus Professor Tony Aspromourgos at the University of Sydney's School of Economics, he looks at how to recover the genuine voice and thought of the historical Adam Smith.
