Adam Smith and the Political Economy of Improvement

Professor Craig Smith will explore Adam Smith’s commitment to the key Scottish Enlightenment idea of Improvement and considers how Smith’s political economy connected to his ideas about the role of government in promoting the wealth of the nation. He explores two distinct models for facilitating economic development drawn from the Scottish experience in the eighteenth century. One advocated by Smith’s predecessor Sir James Steuart and rejected by Smith, the other Smith’s preferred model for the pursuit of economic development.

Craig Smith is Professor of the History of Political Thought in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on the moral and political theory of the Scottish Enlightenment. He is the author of Adam Smith’s Political Philosophy: the invisible hand and spontaneous order; Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society: moral science in the Scottish Enlightenment and Adam Smith. He edited, with others, The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith and the second edition of The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment. He is the incoming editor of The Adam Smith Review.