Celebrating 200 years of a deeply unintuitive idea: Comparative advantage
This past week marked the 200th publication anniversary of David Ricardo’s On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Despite...
Is science like manufacturing or like farming?
It is obvious why specialization improves productivity for manufactured goods (even if people seem to systematically underestimate just...
Why we under-appreciate the division of labor
Economists have long known that a key source of society's wealth is the division of labor. Robinson Crusoe was marvelously...
What is Cognitive Science of Markets?
Since I say I am a "cognitive scientist of markets," I damned well better have an answer to what this means. It's not quite behavioral...
Smith's *The Wealth of Nations*: Introductory thoughts
The first book I am blogging is Adam Smith's masterpiece An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Although...