George Stigler’s Adam Smith: Successes and Failures

George Stigler was a great admirer of Adam Smith as well as a pioneer of writing critical, analytical histories of economics. The paper examines Stigler’s significant contributions to Smith scholarship as well as Stigler’s use of Adam Smith’s analytical insights in his (Stigler’s own work). The paper argues that while Stigler’s assessment of Smith’s analytical achievements in economics is largely a success, his blindness to Smith’s moral philosophy causes him to misrepresent self-interest as the “bedrock” of the Wealth of Nations. Rather, I argue that justice is more fundamental than self-interest, and hence the true “bedrock” of the book. The separation of moral philosophy from economics is Stigler’s most significant failure.