Maria Pia Paganelli
Biographic Data
| ID | 1600406 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maria Pia Paganelli |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maria Pia |
| FAMILY NAME | Paganelli |
| SIGNATURE | PAGANELLI M P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Trinity University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5796-4519 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Intellectual Origins of Chilean Free Banking: Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil and Adam Smith
Chile’s 1860 Banking Law established a system of free banking that seems similar to the Scottish one. It may not be a coincidence. The drafter of the law was Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil, an admirer of Adam Smith on money and banking and of the Scottish free banking system, thus making Adam Smith’s banking ideas a contributing influence (so far, unrecognized) on Chilean free banking
Whose Interest? Conflicts with the Invisible Hand
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is often associated with the idea that in markets individuals’ interests are led by an invisible hand that unintentionally promotes society's interest. Yet, Smith not only qualifies the conditions under which the invisible hand can align individual interests with society's interest, but he also distinguishes between different interests. This distinction among different interests allows him to show that interests can…
Hes Presidential Address: Was Hume a Mercantilist? For Smith, Yes: The Friendly Disagreement of Adam Smith and David Hume on Money
David Hume and Adam Smith were friends, but their friendship does not imply that the two authors shared the same ideas, or should have shared the same ideas. Money is an example of a subject of disagreement between David Hume and Adam Smith that has either been ignored or interpreted as a puzzle, given their friendship. I suggest that Smith did not replicate or cite Hume’s exposition of the quantity of money in his Wealth of Nations because Smith…
Smith and Hume at war: The differing views of Adam Smith and David Hume on commerce and international warfare
Adam Smith and David Hume strongly support commercial societies. But both do not assume that commerce necessarily promotes peace; it might even lead to more wars. Their respective reasoning, however, is very different. Smith claims that wars arise from the rapacity of merchants and manufacturers chasing monopolies, while Hume attributes them to human nature. Smith assumes that the martial spirit decreases, Hume that it is strengthened. Smith supp…
To Intervene or Not to Intervene: This Is Smith’s Problem
Adam Smith is not a dogmatic thinker. His policy prescriptions on whether to intervene in the economy or not depend on his analysis of whether the policies are benefiting only an order of citizens at the expense of society. If the interventions benefit an order of citizens but hurt society, Smith condemns them. If they benefit society, he supports them
Adam Smith and Sympathetic Cosmopolitanism
Is cosmopolitanism something to explain or is it the lack of cosmopolitanism that needs explaining? Is cosmopolitanism natural or something we need to try to achieve? Is cosmopolitanism an end result or a starting point? The answer depends on the anthropological assumptions one makes. If human beings are assumed to be isolated individuals, then cosmopolitanism is something to explain, something to be taught, a possible end result. But if human be…
Adam Smith and Yan Fu: Western Economics in Chinese Perspective by Cheng-chung Lai
shape our under stand ing of eco nom ics.Millmow's book pro vi des the reader a very enjoy able expe ri ence of fol low ing Clark's "gypsy" life style, and it also will become an impor tant source of research as the his tory of national account ing gains more trac tion in the com ing decades
Where is the Labor Theory of Value in Adam Smith? Adam Smith’s Value Theory Revisited
Commentators often follow David Ricardo in looking, especially, at chapters V and VI of Book I of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations as the place to find his theory of value. And most commentators attribute to Adam Smith some versions of a labor theory of value. But in those chapters, Smith is looking for a stable unit of measurement of value and the reservation price of bringing goods to market. We thus suggest that the labor theory of value in Smit…
Smith at 300: The Dignity of Trade
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.” WN I.ii.2
A Smithian Reading of Chilean Free Banking
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Chilean free banking system worked similarly to how Adam Smith describes the eighteenth-century free banking system in Scotland. The characteristics of free banking that Smith identifies as conductive of successful outcomes-free entry, unlimited liability, and convertibility on demand-are present in both Scotland and Chile. And the Chilean system failed for similar reasons to the worries Smith had…
Adam Smith and Economic Development in Theory and Practice: A Rejection of the Stadial Model
Adam Smith allegedly offers a model of economic development in both his Lectures on Jurisprudence and the Wealth of Nations —the so-called four stages of development model. The model presents a linear unfolding view of economic development from primitive to advanced stages. But Smith’s own historical examples systematically contradict this model. I thus question whether Adam Smith actually endorses and uses the four stages model of development to…
Crime and Punishment: Adam Smith’s Theory of Sentimental Law and Economics
For Adam Smith, a crime is not the result of a rational calculation of loss and gain but the consequence of envy and a vain desire to parade wealth to attract the approbation of others, combined with a natural systematic bias in overestimating the probability of success. Similarly, Smith does not conceive of legal sanctions as a rational deterrent but as deriving from the feeling of resentment. While the prevailing approach of the eighteenth cent…
Vanity and Luck in Adam Smith's Economic Growth
What are the causes of prosperity? In addition to the division of labor, saving, capital accumulation, and good institutions, Adam Smith explains opulence through vanity and luck, two variables we tend to forget today. For Smith, wealth comes from our propensity to better our condition, combined with freedom and the security of the law. The propensity to better our condition is grounded in our vanity and can take the form of both parsimony and pr…
Adam Smith and the Virtue of Punctuality
Commercial society changed many things, including what is considered virtuous and what is considered valuable. The increase in productivity observed in commercial society changed the ways we use our time and thus the value of time. Time is now money. So punctuality becomes a virtue. Adam Smith explicitly recognizes the virtue of punctuality as a commercial virtue.
Population as a GDP Proxy in Adam Smith
How do we measure economic growth? In the eighteenth century, well before the birth of Gross Domestic Product commonly used today, looking at the sign of the balance of trade was a way to take the pulse of a nation's economy. Adam Smith rejects this measure and instead suggests that we should look at population growth. Nations that are able to produce enough to support the life of a growing population have growing economies, nations with constant…
Sheila Bransfield, The Man Who Discovered Antarctica: Edward Bransfield Explained. The first man to find and chart the Antarctic mainland (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2019)
A review of the book: Sheila Bransfield, The Man Who Discovered Antarctica: Edward Bransfield Explained. The first man to find and chart the Antarctic mainland (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2019)
Christopher Berry, Essays on Hume, Smith, and the Scottish Enlightenment
The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith, by Paul Sagar
Book Review| February 01 2020 The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith, by Paul Sagar The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith. By Sagar, Paul. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. x; 248 pp. $45.00. Maria Pia Paganelli Maria Pia Paganelli Trinity University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (2020) …
Adam Smith, Anti-Stoic
Commerce changes the production of wealth in a society as well as its ethics. What is appropriate in a non-commercial society is not necessarily appropriate in a commercial one. Adam Smith criticizes Stoic self-command in commercial societies, rather than embracing it, as is often suggested. He argues that Stoicism, with its promotion of indifference to passions, is an ethic appropriate for savages. Savages live in hard conditions where expressin…
The vigorous and doux soldier: David Hume’s military defence of commerce
If war is an inevitable condition of human nature, as David Hume suggests, then what type of societies can best protect us from defeat and conquest? For David Hume, commerce decreases the relative cost of war and promotes technological military advances as well as martial spirit. Commerce therefore makes a country militarily stronger and better equipped to protect itself against attacks than any other kind of society. Hume does not assume commerc…
Boys Do Cry: Adam Smith on Wealth and Expressing Emotions
Recent studies on crying show that crying is more common in happier, freer, and richer countries than in poorer and less free countries. These results can sound counterintuitive and contradict the hypothesis that crying is more observable in countries where people experience more distress. Adam Smith may offer an explanation: In the severe hardship of poverty, showing emotion and distress can be read as a sign of weakness, attracting no sympathy …
We Are Not the Center of the Universe: The Role of Astronomy in the Moral Defense of Commerce in Adam Smith
Adam Smith's account of commercial societies as societies of strangers may be read as a moral defense of commercial societies. A society of strangers can be a fostering environment for moral development. Smith's account of moral development echoes his contemporaries' accounts of the move from geocentric to heliocentric understandings of the solar system. If we imagine ourselves at a distance from our own position, we humble the arrogance of our s…
Adam Smith and the History of Economic Thought: The Case of Banking
Recent Engagements with Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment
Recent literature on Adam Smith and other eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers shows an engaged conversation between the Scots and today's scholars in the sciences that deal with humans-the social sciences and the humanities, as well as neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. We share with the eighteenth-century Scots preoccupations about understanding human beings, human nature, sociability, moral development, our ability to understand nature …
The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith
Adam Smith (1723–90) is best known as the author of the (1776). Although this book remains one of the great works in the history of economics, Smith was a multi-faceted thinker. He wrote an important treatise of moral philosophy, (1759), and was also a sophisticated and learned historian, an attentive student of social behaviour and an analyst of culture. Drawing on the expertise of leading Smith scholars from around the world, this Handbook, thr…
The Adam Smith Problem in Reverse: Self-Interest inThe Wealth of NationsandThe Theory of Moral Sentiments
Research Article| June 01 2008 The Adam Smith Problem in Reverse: Self-Interest in The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments Maria Pia Paganelli Maria Pia Paganelli Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (2008) 40 (2): 365-382. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-2008-006 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Maria Pia Paganelli; The Adam Smith Problem…
The Moralizing Role of Distance in Adam Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentimentsas Possible Praise of Commerce
The Theory of Moral Sentiments can be read as a book praising commerce. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith claims that viewing oneself from a distance decreases the natural tendency toward self-deception and increases the propriety of one's behavior. In front of strangers and distant acquaintances, an individual would generally restrain the more self-indulgent and excessive passions and be more composed than in front of family and clos…
In Medio Stat Virtus: An Alternative View of Usury in Adam Smith's Thinking
Some specific positions of Adam Smith have been, and still are, sources of problems and debates. Generally, the controversies concern apparent contradictions in the Smithian theory. An example of these puzzling contradictions in Smith is his position on usury laws:\nIn countries where interest is permitted, the law, in order to prevent the extortion of usury, generally fixes the highest rate which can be taken without incurring a penalty. This ra…
Adam Smith and Self-Interest
The concepts of self-interest and self-love feature prominently in both and . Various notions of self-preservation, self-interest, and self-love are distinguished, and it is shown how self-love functions less as a motive than as an orientation. Although self-love may corrupt moral perception, the impartial spectator serves as an antidote. Smith’s conception of self-interest in is a broad one and not inconsistent with the moral psychology of . Tha…
The vigorous and doux soldier: David Hume’s military defence of commerce
If war is an inevitable condition of human nature, as David Hume suggests, then what type of societies can best protect us from defeat and conquest? For David Hume, commerce decreases the relative cost of war and promotes technological military advances as well as martial spirit. Commerce therefore makes a country militarily stronger and better equipped to protect itself against attacks than any other kind of society. Hume does not assume commerc…
Population as a GDP Proxy in Adam Smith
How do we measure economic growth? In the eighteenth century, well before the birth of Gross Domestic Product commonly used today, looking at the sign of the balance of trade was a way to take the pulse of a nation's economy. Adam Smith rejects this measure and instead suggests that we should look at population growth. Nations that are able to produce enough to support the life of a growing population have growing economies, nations with constant…
Adam Smith, Anti-Stoic
Commerce changes the production of wealth in a society as well as its ethics. What is appropriate in a non-commercial society is not necessarily appropriate in a commercial one. Adam Smith criticizes Stoic self-command in commercial societies, rather than embracing it, as is often suggested. He argues that Stoicism, with its promotion of indifference to passions, is an ethic appropriate for savages. Savages live in hard conditions where expressin…
We Are Not the Center of the Universe: The Role of Astronomy in the Moral Defense of Commerce in Adam Smith
Adam Smith's account of commercial societies as societies of strangers may be read as a moral defense of commercial societies. A society of strangers can be a fostering environment for moral development. Smith's account of moral development echoes his contemporaries' accounts of the move from geocentric to heliocentric understandings of the solar system. If we imagine ourselves at a distance from our own position, we humble the arrogance of our s…
Recent Engagements with Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment
Recent literature on Adam Smith and other eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers shows an engaged conversation between the Scots and today's scholars in the sciences that deal with humans-the social sciences and the humanities, as well as neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. We share with the eighteenth-century Scots preoccupations about understanding human beings, human nature, sociability, moral development, our ability to understand nature …
Vanity and Luck in Adam Smith's Economic Growth
What are the causes of prosperity? In addition to the division of labor, saving, capital accumulation, and good institutions, Adam Smith explains opulence through vanity and luck, two variables we tend to forget today. For Smith, wealth comes from our propensity to better our condition, combined with freedom and the security of the law. The propensity to better our condition is grounded in our vanity and can take the form of both parsimony and pr…
Boys Do Cry: Adam Smith on Wealth and Expressing Emotions
Recent studies on crying show that crying is more common in happier, freer, and richer countries than in poorer and less free countries. These results can sound counterintuitive and contradict the hypothesis that crying is more observable in countries where people experience more distress. Adam Smith may offer an explanation: In the severe hardship of poverty, showing emotion and distress can be read as a sign of weakness, attracting no sympathy …
Are Two Knaves Better Than One? Hume, Buchanan, and Musgrave on Economics and Government
It is commonplace to view market agents as self-interested knaves, while government agents are either as knaves or public-spirited angels. What are the consequences of these different motivational assumptions in modeling governmental and market behavior? We compare David Hume, James M. Buchanan, and Richard Musgrave. We claim that Hume, the only one thinking consistently in terms of the worst-case, offers a second best solution for both the gover…
In Medio Stat Virtus: An Alternative View of Usury in Adam Smith's Thinking
Some specific positions of Adam Smith have been, and still are, sources of problems and debates. Generally, the controversies concern apparent contradictions in the Smithian theory. An example of these puzzling contradictions in Smith is his position on usury laws:\nIn countries where interest is permitted, the law, in order to prevent the extortion of usury, generally fixes the highest rate which can be taken without incurring a penalty. This ra…
Are Two Knaves Better Than One? Hume, Buchanan, and Musgrave on Economics and Government
It is commonplace to view market agents as self-interested knaves, while government agents are either as knaves or public-spirited angels. What are the consequences of these different motivational assumptions in modeling governmental and market behavior? We compare David Hume, James M. Buchanan, and Richard Musgrave. We claim that Hume, the only one thinking consistently in terms of the worst-case, offers a second best solution for both the gover…
The Adam Smith Problem in Reverse: Self-Interest inThe Wealth of NationsandThe Theory of Moral Sentiments
Research Article| June 01 2008 The Adam Smith Problem in Reverse: Self-Interest in The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments Maria Pia Paganelli Maria Pia Paganelli Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (2008) 40 (2): 365-382. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-2008-006 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Maria Pia Paganelli; The Adam Smith Problem…
David Hume on Monetary Policy: A Retrospective Approach
Monetary policy is a modern idea of which David Hume is generally considered a precursor. Moreover, thanks to Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas, he is often presented as one of the first and most illustrious endorser of monetarism. This paper argues against this view, and in agreement with Joseph Schumpeter, that Hume's contribution to economics, while not insignificant, cannot claim any real novelties. It offers an interpretation of Hume as a des…
The Moralizing Role of Distance in Adam Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentimentsas Possible Praise of Commerce
The Theory of Moral Sentiments can be read as a book praising commerce. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith claims that viewing oneself from a distance decreases the natural tendency toward self-deception and increases the propriety of one's behavior. In front of strangers and distant acquaintances, an individual would generally restrain the more self-indulgent and excessive passions and be more composed than in front of family and clos…
The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith
Adam Smith (1723–90) is best known as the author of the (1776). Although this book remains one of the great works in the history of economics, Smith was a multi-faceted thinker. He wrote an important treatise of moral philosophy, (1759), and was also a sophisticated and learned historian, an attentive student of social behaviour and an analyst of culture. Drawing on the expertise of leading Smith scholars from around the world, this Handbook, thr…
Adam Smith and Self-Interest
The concepts of self-interest and self-love feature prominently in both and . Various notions of self-preservation, self-interest, and self-love are distinguished, and it is shown how self-love functions less as a motive than as an orientation. Although self-love may corrupt moral perception, the impartial spectator serves as an antidote. Smith’s conception of self-interest in is a broad one and not inconsistent with the moral psychology of . Tha…
Recent Engagements with Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment
Recent literature on Adam Smith and other eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers shows an engaged conversation between the Scots and today's scholars in the sciences that deal with humans-the social sciences and the humanities, as well as neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. We share with the eighteenth-century Scots preoccupations about understanding human beings, human nature, sociability, moral development, our ability to understand nature …
Adam Smith and the History of Economic Thought: The Case of Banking
Boys Do Cry: Adam Smith on Wealth and Expressing Emotions
Recent studies on crying show that crying is more common in happier, freer, and richer countries than in poorer and less free countries. These results can sound counterintuitive and contradict the hypothesis that crying is more observable in countries where people experience more distress. Adam Smith may offer an explanation: In the severe hardship of poverty, showing emotion and distress can be read as a sign of weakness, attracting no sympathy …
We Are Not the Center of the Universe: The Role of Astronomy in the Moral Defense of Commerce in Adam Smith
Adam Smith's account of commercial societies as societies of strangers may be read as a moral defense of commercial societies. A society of strangers can be a fostering environment for moral development. Smith's account of moral development echoes his contemporaries' accounts of the move from geocentric to heliocentric understandings of the solar system. If we imagine ourselves at a distance from our own position, we humble the arrogance of our s…
The vigorous and doux soldier: David Hume’s military defence of commerce
If war is an inevitable condition of human nature, as David Hume suggests, then what type of societies can best protect us from defeat and conquest? For David Hume, commerce decreases the relative cost of war and promotes technological military advances as well as martial spirit. Commerce therefore makes a country militarily stronger and better equipped to protect itself against attacks than any other kind of society. Hume does not assume commerc…
Adam Smith, Anti-Stoic
Commerce changes the production of wealth in a society as well as its ethics. What is appropriate in a non-commercial society is not necessarily appropriate in a commercial one. Adam Smith criticizes Stoic self-command in commercial societies, rather than embracing it, as is often suggested. He argues that Stoicism, with its promotion of indifference to passions, is an ethic appropriate for savages. Savages live in hard conditions where expressin…
Sheila Bransfield, The Man Who Discovered Antarctica: Edward Bransfield Explained. The first man to find and chart the Antarctic mainland (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2019)
A review of the book: Sheila Bransfield, The Man Who Discovered Antarctica: Edward Bransfield Explained. The first man to find and chart the Antarctic mainland (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2019)
Christopher Berry, Essays on Hume, Smith, and the Scottish Enlightenment
The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith, by Paul Sagar
Book Review| February 01 2020 The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith, by Paul Sagar The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith. By Sagar, Paul. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. x; 248 pp. $45.00. Maria Pia Paganelli Maria Pia Paganelli Trinity University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (2020) …
Adam Smith and the Virtue of Punctuality
Commercial society changed many things, including what is considered virtuous and what is considered valuable. The increase in productivity observed in commercial society changed the ways we use our time and thus the value of time. Time is now money. So punctuality becomes a virtue. Adam Smith explicitly recognizes the virtue of punctuality as a commercial virtue.
Population as a GDP Proxy in Adam Smith
How do we measure economic growth? In the eighteenth century, well before the birth of Gross Domestic Product commonly used today, looking at the sign of the balance of trade was a way to take the pulse of a nation's economy. Adam Smith rejects this measure and instead suggests that we should look at population growth. Nations that are able to produce enough to support the life of a growing population have growing economies, nations with constant…
Adam Smith and Economic Development in Theory and Practice: A Rejection of the Stadial Model
Adam Smith allegedly offers a model of economic development in both his Lectures on Jurisprudence and the Wealth of Nations —the so-called four stages of development model. The model presents a linear unfolding view of economic development from primitive to advanced stages. But Smith’s own historical examples systematically contradict this model. I thus question whether Adam Smith actually endorses and uses the four stages model of development to…
Crime and Punishment: Adam Smith’s Theory of Sentimental Law and Economics
For Adam Smith, a crime is not the result of a rational calculation of loss and gain but the consequence of envy and a vain desire to parade wealth to attract the approbation of others, combined with a natural systematic bias in overestimating the probability of success. Similarly, Smith does not conceive of legal sanctions as a rational deterrent but as deriving from the feeling of resentment. While the prevailing approach of the eighteenth cent…
Vanity and Luck in Adam Smith's Economic Growth
What are the causes of prosperity? In addition to the division of labor, saving, capital accumulation, and good institutions, Adam Smith explains opulence through vanity and luck, two variables we tend to forget today. For Smith, wealth comes from our propensity to better our condition, combined with freedom and the security of the law. The propensity to better our condition is grounded in our vanity and can take the form of both parsimony and pr…
Where is the Labor Theory of Value in Adam Smith? Adam Smith’s Value Theory Revisited
Commentators often follow David Ricardo in looking, especially, at chapters V and VI of Book I of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations as the place to find his theory of value. And most commentators attribute to Adam Smith some versions of a labor theory of value. But in those chapters, Smith is looking for a stable unit of measurement of value and the reservation price of bringing goods to market. We thus suggest that the labor theory of value in Smit…
Smith at 300: The Dignity of Trade
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.” WN I.ii.2
A Smithian Reading of Chilean Free Banking
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Chilean free banking system worked similarly to how Adam Smith describes the eighteenth-century free banking system in Scotland. The characteristics of free banking that Smith identifies as conductive of successful outcomes-free entry, unlimited liability, and convertibility on demand-are present in both Scotland and Chile. And the Chilean system failed for similar reasons to the worries Smith had…
Adam Smith and Yan Fu: Western Economics in Chinese Perspective by Cheng-chung Lai
shape our under stand ing of eco nom ics.Millmow's book pro vi des the reader a very enjoy able expe ri ence of fol low ing Clark's "gypsy" life style, and it also will become an impor tant source of research as the his tory of national account ing gains more trac tion in the com ing decades
Adam smith (21 works) · Economics (20 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Neoclassical economics (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Economic Theory and Institutions (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (10 works)