Adam Smith's market never stood alone

|Peter Boettke|

|Peter Boettke| I had the great privilege of introducing Elinor Ostrom tonight.  She is a very special person and we were all very fortunate to have her join us tonight.  Here are my introductory remarks:

It is very simple. Adam Smith understood it and commented on it. If you allow businesses to have control of the market they will take benefits they don’t deserve at the expense of society. And many business will seek every opportunity to collude with other businesses to stop the free market from reducing their profits and instead instituting anti-competitive practices. Unless you stop this you don’t get the benefits of free market capitalism.

|Peter Boettke|

Gavin Kennedy is a professor and director of contracts at Edinburgh Business School. He authors the Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy blog discussing the mis-attributions to Adam Smith, which are all too common now. A good example is, Perpetrators of Myths Mislead Generations of Students, Some of Whom Grow Up to (mis)Advise Legislators:

By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and the executive secretary of International Development Economics Associates. Cross-posted from Triple Crisis.

While China’s special brand of state-sanctioned capitalism has its fair share of critics, it is difficult to ignore the notable successes competition and free markets have brought to the country. In little more than the space of a single generation, China’s shift away from communism has helped lift more than 630 million people out of poverty and turn a once-isolated nation into a global powerhouse.