An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations¶
Smith, A. (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
Cited by¶
12 citations across 12 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Agency Problem
- The construct was named and formalized by Jensen and Meckling (1976) and Ross (1973), though the underlying concerns appear in Adam Smith (1776) and throughout economic and legal history
This sourceW. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Book V, Ch. 1 observes that the directors of joint-stock companies, 'being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own,' cannot be expected to watch over it with the same anxious vigilance as private partners, so 'negligence and profusion' must prevail
- The construct was named and formalized by Jensen and Meckling (1976) and Ross (1973), though the underlying concerns appear in Adam Smith (1776) and throughout economic and legal history
- Comparative Advantage
This sourceW. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Book I, Chapter I ("Of the Division of Labour") opens with the pin-factory observation: ten workers each specializing in one of eighteen distinct operations produce upwards of 48,000 pins per day, whereas one worker doing all operations would scarcely make twenty. Foundational analysis treating division of labor as the principal source of productivity growth, attributed to three causes: dexterity gains, time saved in switching tasks, and the invention of specialized machinery.
- Division of Labor
- Economies of Scale
- Economies of Scale name the abstraction — traceable in its earliest recognizable form to Smith's (1776) pin-factory account of how division of labor lowers cost per unit as production scales — that (1) as the scale of a production, operational, or service process grows, (2) the average cost per unit of output tends to decline — often significantly — because (3) fixed costs are spread across more units, specialization deepens, larger equipment becomes viable, bulk-purchasing leverage increases, and learning accumulates, so that (4) within some range of scale, expansion is a self-reinforcing source of cost advantage that can eventually reshape the competitive structure of the industry.
This sourceW. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Book I, Ch. I ("Of the Division of Labour") opens with the pin-factory observation: ten workers each specializing in one of about eighteen distinct operations produce upwards of 48,000 pins per day, whereas one worker doing all operations would scarcely make twenty.
- Economies of Scale name the abstraction — traceable in its earliest recognizable form to Smith's (1776) pin-factory account of how division of labor lowers cost per unit as production scales — that (1) as the scale of a production, operational, or service process grows, (2) the average cost per unit of output tends to decline — often significantly — because (3) fixed costs are spread across more units, specialization deepens, larger equipment becomes viable, bulk-purchasing leverage increases, and learning accumulates, so that (4) within some range of scale, expansion is a self-reinforcing source of cost advantage that can eventually reshape the competitive structure of the industry.
- Exchange
- The classical economics literature, beginning with Smith's (1776) treatment of the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange, isolates this pattern as the substrate on which markets and prices are built rather than as a synonym for either.
This sourceW. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Book I, Chapter II ('Of the Principle which gives Occasion to the Division of Labour') isolates the 'propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another' as a foundational feature of human nature giving rise to the division of labour.
- The classical economics literature, beginning with Smith's (1776) treatment of the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange, isolates this pattern as the substrate on which markets and prices are built rather than as a synonym for either.
- Gains from Trade
- As Ricardo (1817) demonstrated, building on Smith (1776),
This sourceBook I, Ch. I ('Of the Division of Labour') gives the pin-factory observation (ten specialized workers make upwards of 48,000 pins/day vs. scarcely twenty each unspecialized); supports the Core-Idea framing that the prime builds on Smith's division-of-labour productivity logic. (Annotation detail '48,000 pins' and 'eighteen distinct operations' verified accurate to the text.)
- As Ricardo (1817) demonstrated, building on Smith (1776),
- Increasing Returns
- … foregrounds the supply-side channel where Smith (1776) located rising productivity in the division of labor, and learning_curve_effects foregrounds the experience channel that Wright (1936) first quantified in airplane manufacturing — all three are the same four-role pattern under different reinforcement channels.
This sourceW. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Book I, Chapter I ("Of the Division of Labour") opens with the pin-factory observation: ten workers each specializing in one of eighteen distinct operations produce upwards of 48,000 pins per day, whereas one worker doing all operations would scarcely make twenty. Foundational analysis treating division of labor as the principal source of productivity growth, attributed to three causes: dexterity gains, time saved in switching tasks, and the invention of specialized machinery.
- … foregrounds the supply-side channel where Smith (1776) located rising productivity in the division of labor, and learning_curve_effects foregrounds the experience channel that Wright (1936) first quantified in airplane manufacturing — all three are the same four-role pattern under different reinforcement channels.
- Marginal Analysis
- The marginal-comparison logic underlying modern optimization has deeper roots: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776)
This sourceW. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Book I, Chapter I ("Of the Division of Labour") opens with the pin-factory observation: ten workers each specializing in one of eighteen distinct operations produce upwards of 48,000 pins per day, whereas one worker doing all operations would scarcely make twenty. Foundational analysis treating division of labor as the principal source of productivity growth, attributed to three causes: dexterity gains, time saved in switching tasks, and the invention of specialized machinery.
- The marginal-comparison logic underlying modern optimization has deeper roots: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776)
- Marginal Utility
- The diamond-water paradox (noted by Adam Smith, 1776)
This sourceW. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Book I, Chapter I ("Of the Division of Labour") opens with the pin-factory observation: ten workers each specializing in one of eighteen distinct operations produce upwards of 48,000 pins per day, whereas one worker doing all operations would scarcely make twenty. Foundational analysis treating division of labor as the principal source of productivity growth, attributed to three causes: dexterity gains, time saved in switching tasks, and the invention of specialized machinery.
- The diamond-water paradox (noted by Adam Smith, 1776)
- Price Mechanism
- The Price Mechanism names the abstraction that (1) a market price, emerging from the aggregate interaction of buyers' demand and sellers' supply, (2) compresses vast amounts of decentralized information about relative scarcities, preferences, and production costs into a single scalar signal, (3) which each buyer and seller can act on locally by comparing to their own opportunity cost or willingness to pay, so that (4) countless independent decisions self-coordinate into a coherent allocation of resources without any central planner possessing or transmitting the underlying information — the foundational claim of Smith (1776).
This sourceW. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Book I, Chapter I ("Of the Division of Labour") opens with the pin-factory observation: ten workers each specializing in one of eighteen distinct operations produce upwards of 48,000 pins per day, whereas one worker doing all operations would scarcely make twenty. Foundational analysis treating division of labor as the principal source of productivity growth, attributed to three causes: dexterity gains, time saved in switching tasks, and the invention of specialized machinery.
- The Price Mechanism names the abstraction that (1) a market price, emerging from the aggregate interaction of buyers' demand and sellers' supply, (2) compresses vast amounts of decentralized information about relative scarcities, preferences, and production costs into a single scalar signal, (3) which each buyer and seller can act on locally by comparing to their own opportunity cost or willingness to pay, so that (4) countless independent decisions self-coordinate into a coherent allocation of resources without any central planner possessing or transmitting the underlying information — the foundational claim of Smith (1776).
- Specialization
- The classic statement is Adam Smith's (1776) opening analysis of the pin manufactory, where dividing the work of pin-making into roughly eighteen narrow operations multiplied output per worker by orders of magnitude over what an undifferentiated artisan could achieve.
This sourceW. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Book I, Chapter I ("Of the Division of Labour") opens with the pin-factory observation: ten workers each specializing in one of eighteen distinct operations produce upwards of 48,000 pins per day, whereas one worker doing all operations would scarcely make twenty. Foundational analysis treating division of labor as the principal source of productivity growth, attributed to three causes: dexterity gains, time saved in switching tasks, and the invention of specialized machinery.
- The classic statement is Adam Smith's (1776) opening analysis of the pin manufactory, where dividing the work of pin-making into roughly eighteen narrow operations multiplied output per worker by orders of magnitude over what an undifferentiated artisan could achieve.
- Zero Sum Game
- Electoral and political competition — a fixed number of seats, offices, or posts makes partisan competition zero-sum at the allocation step. Sports and tournaments — ranked finishes, medals, and titles are zero-sum allocations across competitors. Trade and cognition — the historical mercantilist belief that trade is zero-sum, refuted by the gains-from-specialisation argument; and the documented zero-sum bias in attitudes toward immigration, growth, and intergenerational equity.
This sourceRefutes the mercantilist zero-sum view of trade via the gains from specialization and exchange — the canonical relaxation of a wrongly-perceived fixed total.
- Electoral and political competition — a fixed number of seats, offices, or posts makes partisan competition zero-sum at the allocation step. Sports and tournaments — ranked finishes, medals, and titles are zero-sum allocations across competitors. Trade and cognition — the historical mercantilist belief that trade is zero-sum, refuted by the gains-from-specialisation argument; and the documented zero-sum bias in attitudes toward immigration, growth, and intergenerational equity.
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