Working Papers

The Conceptual Semantics of “Money” and “Exchangeable Value of Goods” in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations

With Gian Marco Farese

This paper examines the conceptual semantics of two keywords belonging to the English vocabulary of economics discourse, money and value (intended as exchangeable value of goods), as originally theorized by Adam Smith in Chapter IV of the Wealth of Nations. It is argued that a semantic investigation of the original conceptualization of these words is helpful to resolve various interpretive misconceptions in modern economics and, concurrently, favors a better understanding of three fundamental principles of economics discussed by Smith in this Chapter. In particular, the present analysis elucidates the meaning of money intended as the universal instrument of human transactions and the polysemy of value in the so-called “water-diamond paradox”. The analysis demonstrates that these meanings are characterized by a high degree of semantic and conceptual complexity. Three semantic illustrations of the fundamental principles of economics concerning money and value are produced with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage methodology.

Humanomics and Human Action Explanations of Why Human Beings Divide Their Labor

Modern economics, whether in the orthodox tradition of Paul Samuelson or the heterodox tradition of Ludwig von Mises, ultimately looks to explain economic outcomes, that is, the effects of human action. In their own way, neither distinguish the consequences of human action from the origins of human action, and neither have any truck with ethical valuations and moral judgments as part of their modern subjective theory of value. If economics is to be about flesh-and-blood human beings, and why we do what we do, then we need an analytical framework that considers human action in its origin, rather than in just its outcome. Following Adam Smith’s lead, I explain the division of labor with a humanomics account that is moral all the way down.

On Explaining Why the (Human) World is Rich

The wealth of the modern world is a natural historical marvel.  Explaining it has traditionally been the purview of economic historians, as exemplified by the recent book How the World Became Rich by Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin.  But economic historians tend to only ask process-oriented “how” questions and “by what means” questions of the Great Enrichment. The eight co-authors of Explaining Technology, who are not economic historians, engage in the debate asking a different question.  Their goal is to explain the exponential shape of our enrichment with a model of the combinatorial evolution of technology.  With an eye toward how we ask questions of the Great Enrichment, the essay proposes broadening our inquiries to include questions typically overlooked in modern economic science, namely, “What form does it take? and “For what purpose?”