The Wealth of Nations at 250

On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations, this special issue seeks to illuminate Smith's great book anew by offering a glimpse of what the Adam Smith of the twenty-first century might look like—contested and reinterpreted, as ever. Articles deal with buying and selling, economic progress, and conflicts and power. As the articles demonstrate, Smith remains a thinker for the twenty-first century not because his work resolves the problems of modern commercial society, but because it helps us see why those problems continue to return, and why the attempt to think them through, with all the elusiveness that such an attempt entails, is itself never finished.

Contributors: Michele Bee, Laurie Bréban, Vivienne Brown, Jean Dellemotte, Yiftah Elazar, Jimena Hurtado, Glory M. Liu, Maria Pia Paganelli, Michelle Schwarze, Ivan Sternick, Louise Villeneuve, and Barry R. Weingast