Abstract
Adam Smith employed the term ‘invisible hand’ twice in his published writings, and a considerable secondary literature has explored the multiple meanings he intended to convey by the use of this metaphor. I argue that, whatever he did mean, he certainly did not mean that competition or the market mechanism promoted efficiency: instead it promoted the growth of income, even for the poor.
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Blaug, M. (2018). Invisible Hand. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1217
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1217
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