Accounting for the wealth of Denmark: a case study of Smithian growth using the emergence of modern accounting in Danish dairying

Abstract

The idea of “Smithian growth” rests on a “natural” development out of agriculture through capital accumulation, and the division of labour. We confront these concepts with an “historical experiment” and the case of Danish agriculture in the nineteenth century. Specifically, we look at how accounting was used to promote specialization, ultimately in butter production, leading to the massive increases in productivity that Smith predicted. We also observe the emergence of Smithian “philosophers”. This ultimately led to the capital-intensive industrialization of Danish agriculture through butter factories, and general development. We argue that this establishes the historical relevance of Smith’s theories.     

ADAM SMITH AND THE ROLE OF THE METAPHOR OF AN INVISIBLE HAND

Daniel Klein and Brandon Lucas's ‘In a Word or Two, Placed in the Middle: The Invisible Hand in Smith's Tomes’, following a vague hint by Peter Minowitz (2004) , offers original physical evidence that Smith ‘deliberately placed the phrase “led by an invisible hand”– at the physical centre of both his masterworks’. Further, it suggests that the invisible‐hand paragraphs are a response to Rousseau (1755 ); and that in ‘numerous and rich ways’, centrality holds ‘special and positive significance in Smith's thought’. This paper acknowledges the physical centrality of the invisible‐hand metaphor, but questions whether centrality alone gives weight to wider claims that the ‘invisible hand’ was Smith's ‘central idea’. It draws upon Smith's Rhetoric Lectures (1763), and argues that the invisible‐hand paragraphs in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations identify the actual objects of the invisible‐hand metaphor. This paper insists that Adam Smith is the most reliable source for revealing what he meant. In contrast, most modern attributions of special meaning to Adam Smith's use of the metaphor ignore Smith's teaching on the use of metaphors and, instead, make numerous, and often mutually exclusive, claims that Smith had a ‘doctrine’ of ‘an invisible‐hand’.     

马克思与斯密:关于投机行为的不同看法

本文强调马克思与斯密对投机的认识存在分歧,主张把这种分歧追溯到他们秉持的不同的个人观念。斯密在对个人进行抽象时只强调了自利性和理性,马克思则把相互依赖、相互制约也看作个人的行为特征。因为强调人们彼此间的依赖和制约,马克思没有忽视彼此依赖和制约着的任意一方行为主体,他正视选择投机的资本家的存在,承认投机还会对资产价格进而对日常生活和生产经营活动造成冲击,在他笔下,选择投机的资本家、选择投资的资本家和雇佣工人总是结成一定的关系借以制约彼此的行为选择。因为没有把个人理解为彼此依赖和制约着的。斯密轻易忽视了选择投机的资本家的存在,他否认投机及其对资产价格进而对日常生活和生产经营活动造成的冲击,无法正确理解选择投机的资本家与他人结成的关系。     

Early Smithian economics in the Spanish empire: J. H. Vieytes and colonial policy *

Juan Hipolito Vieytes (1762–1815)was a hero of the May 1810 Revolution in Buenos Aires and one of the early economists in the River Plate area. Although Robert Sidney Smith dismissed Vieytes as a very minor figure in Spanish economic thought, this article attempts to show that Vieytes, an entrepreneur and journalist and only self-taught in political economy, was an early and able follower and divulgator of Smithian economics. He advocated free trade and liberal economic reforms, pointing at the competitiveness of the domestic workshops or ‘popular industry’ in a country with scanty population and extensive and cheap land.     

Selfishness, cooperation, the evolutionary point of view and its implications for economics

The assumed selfishness of market actors could be considered in the context of two perspectives: macroeconomic and microeconomic. The first concerns the market mechanism as the most effective from the social well-being or the wealth of a nation points of view. The latter is based on the premises of the nature of human beings. I have distinguished between two possible ways of understanding selfish forms of behaviour in the market: as rational economic behaviour i.e. the most effective from the gains and losses point of view (i.e. public interests in the works of A. Smith) or as selfish from the psychological point of view (this is mostly presented by J. S. Mill's theory). The first approach seems to be concerned with the creation of the most effective market mechanism from the State's point of view. In the context of historical processes over 400 years, cultural evolution “has been promoting” selfish behaviour; for example, it was widely presented in T. Hobbes' works and then for over 200 years, the theory of A. Smith has been supporting and moulding the institutional context of market and social behaviour. Thus, positive economics describes the market created by the ideas of a neo-classical paradigm, which is based on the normative premises of A. Smith and J. S. Mill. Moreover, the virtual market behaviour described by “effects” (f. e. Veblen's effect) and failures seems to be a manifestation of a discrepancy between market reality and the classical assumptions.The social evolution of human beings has been advantageous to the human species. Moreover, from the social point of view, pro-social behaviour is “natural” as well as desirable and it has been preferred by the cultural evolution. Competitiveness assumes that somebody has to lose, because someone gains. Cooperation looks for gains for all the players. The choice is political, and not imposed by selfishness.     

Adam Smith and the division of labour: is there a difference between organisation and market?

The paper claims that, in The Wealth of Nations, the divisionof labour refers simultaneously to two different things: a socialdivision of labour and an organisational division of labour.The central point is that the organisation of work (the organisationaldivision of labour) in the firm is the logical counterpart ofthe social division of labour, and that these reflect two inseparableaspects of the process of the division of labour. Smith is thusconcerned with organisations as well as with markets, each functioningaccording to the same principle. Hence, Smith does not believethat the organisational and the social divisions of labour arefundamentally different, although he does recognise some variationbetween them and describes different states of the divisionof labour within the firm, liberal and capitalist.     

Labour employed in production and labour commanded: a Ricardian conjecture

This paper explains the origin of some important ambiguitiesin the analysis of value and prices put forward by Smith inhis Wealth of Nations by considering the possibility that theyreflect a previous draft of the book where the quantity of labouremployed in production was indicated as the sole determinantof real price and exchange ratios. This conjecture is evidencedindirectly by the way in which Smith presented his own analysisat the end of Book I, Chapter IV; by some passages containedin Book I and Book II which suggest that the quantity of labouremployed in production should play a crucial role within theanalysis of exchangeable value; and by the important modificationsintroduced by Smith in Book I, Chapter VI, after the first editionof the Wealth of Nations was published.     

对经济学的"手"理论的述评

通过综合分析经济学理论关于"看不见的右手"(市场)、"看得见的左手"(政府)、"看得见的右手"(企业)和"看不见的左手"(权力及利益集团)的功能、缺陷及发挥各只"手"的功能所必需的约束条件,可以看出,要实现资源的优化配置、经济增长和社会和谐,各只"手"必须各司其职,发挥其长处、规避其缺陷,在其有效边界内运作而不是畸形发育,并处理好"四只手"之间的比例、结构和均衡关系。     

实物期权在自然资源投资中的应用

文章对有关自然资源投资中应用实物期权的文献进行了回顾,探讨了资源商品价格、储量估价、勘探阶段的信息投资期权、开发阶段的PSS模型、生产阶段的Smith 和 McCardle模型,并指出资源商品的价格过程、储量价值与资源商品价格的关系、生产项目的价值函数、基于实物期权的投资业绩计量、投资项目的权利义务框架及投资项目有关义务的建模等问题是未来研究的重点.