Maria Pia Paganelli on 250 Years of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins speaks with Maria Pia Paganelli about Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations on the occasion of its 250th anniversary. Their conversation situates Smith as a sharp moral and political critic of monopoly and empire. Paganelli situates the book in the vibrant world of the Scottish Enlightenment and shows how Smith’s central concern was not wealth for its own sake, but the material conditions that make human flourishing possible. Together, Collins and Paganelli explore Smith’s views on trade, education, public debt, war, and justice, offering a rich and accessible portrait of The Wealth of Nations as both a foundational work of political economy and a deeply normative indictment of the British commercial system in Smith’s time.

Dr. Maria Pia Paganelli is a professor of economics at Trinity University in San Antonio where she teaches classes in the principles of economics, the economics of law, Smithian economics, a study abroad course on the history of Iceland, and more. She is the author of The Routledge Guidebook of Smith's Wealth of Nations (Routledge, 2020), and co-edited the books Adam Smith and Rousseau: Ethics, Politics, and Economics (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), and The Oxford Handbook on Adam Smith (Oxford university Press, 2013).

Show Notes:

• Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Liberty Fund, 1982), available for free at Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty.

• Maria Pia Paganelli, “The Adam Smith Problem in Reverse: Self-Interest in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments”

• Maria Pia Paganelli, “To Intervene or Not to Intervene: This is Smith’s Problem”

• Maria Pia Paganelli, “Adam Smith the Dissenter”

• Maria Pia Paganelli, “Adam Smith and the Morality of Political Economy: A Public Choice Reading”

• Maria Pia Paganelli and Reinhard Schumacher, “Do not take peace for granted: Adam Smith’s warning on the relation between commerce and war.”

• Maria Pia Paganelli and Reinhard Schumacher, “Smith and Hume at War: The Differing Views of Adam Smith and David Hume on Commerce and International Warfare”

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