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Smithian Markets

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Abstract

The markets Smith wrote about were not the abstract markets his distant successors analysed at the end of the 19th century and bled to death mathematically in the 20th. And it is more than a difference between description and analysis; Smith addressed completely different phenomena, in a different age and for a different purpose. Smithian markets were located in time and space, and were real events, not equations. Smith walked through these markets in Kirkcaldy, Glasgow and Edinburgh; he touched their produce and spoke to the sellers, even acted occasionally in the role of a (frugal) buyer.

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© 2005 Gavin Kennedy

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Kennedy, G. (2005). Smithian Markets. In: Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511194_41

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