Adam Smith’s view of economic inequality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benoît Walraevens
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Absolute Poverty ◽  
Positive View ◽  
Per Se ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
New Evidence

Abstract Adam Smith has usually been seen as an economist who had a positive view of economic inequalities and who was more concerned with diminishing absolute poverty rather than inequalities. Recently though, Rasmussen (2016; ‘Adam smith on what is wrong with economic inequality, American Political Science Review, vol. 110, no. 2, 342–52’) argued that Smith worried about the effects of extreme inequalities on the morality and happiness of commercial societies. While we do not deny Smith’s worries on this front and provide new evidence here, the aim of this paper was to show that Smith cared more about the causes of inequalities than their level per se, or independently of the former. Interestingly, Smith seems to reconcile fairness with economic efficiency in his plea for the system of natural liberty in which inequalities arise from the efforts, talents and risk-taking of individuals and ultimately benefit the least well-off. Moreover, and contrary to what Rasmussen claims, Smith addresses several contemporary issues such as the links between inequalities, economic growth, social mobility and politics.

Are Two (or Three or Four … or Nine) Heads Better than One? Collaboration, Multidisciplinarity, and Publishability

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 507-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Sigelman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Science Review ◽  
The Social ◽  
Per Se ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Better Than

ABSTRACTAlthough collaborative research has become much more common in the social sciences, including political science, little is known about the consequences of collaboration. This article uses papers submitted to theAmerican Political Science Reviewto assess whether the widely acknowledged benefits of collaboration produced papers that were more likely to be accepted for publication. The results indicate that collaboration per se made little or no difference, but that the disciplinary configuration of the authors did result in differences in the success of these submissions.

A Response to Jeffrey Isaac

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (04) ◽  
pp. 739
Author(s):  
Gregory J. Kasza
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Comparable Data ◽  
Science Review ◽  
Political Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Regional Association ◽  
American Political Science

The purpose of the present symposium was to evaluate Perestroika's impact. Since theAmerican Political Science Review(APSR), theAmerican Journal of Political Science(AJPS), and theJournal of Politics(JOP) were all targets of criticism in the movement, whereas other national and regional association journals such asPerspectives on PoliticsandPolitical Research Quarterlywere not, I looked for change in the former. Comparable data on the past contents of theAPSRandAJPShad already been published, so I focused my recent surveys on those two. This focus implies no judgment as to the relative prestige of these journals. They pretend to represent the discipline as a whole and are paid for by all association members, and these are sufficient reasons to address their editorial biases.

scholarly journals Desarrollo capitalista y la inviabilidad del planteamiento ecologista —contradicciones entre la lógica de acumulación de capital y los conceptos de protección/conservación del medio ambiente—

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (51) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Carlos Eduardo Cruz-Meléndez
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
Per Se

La creciente constatación de la destrucción ambiental a escala planetaria que conlleva el desarrollo de una producción económica regida por la lógica de la acumulación capitalista ha motivado, a su vez, una creciente movilización social contestataria centrada en la protección per se del medio ambiente. Así, los planteamientos ecologistas críticos se quedan en última instancia en atacar los síntomas de la crisis ambiental y no sus causas, que subyacen precisamente en el supuesto y exigencia de un crecimiento a infinito de la explotación económica tanto del ser humano como de los llamados recursos naturales. Y esta contradicción es posible porque éticamente los planteamientos ecologistas no superan una ética compatible con la sociedad capitalista basada en un “bien común” abstracto, sin historia, tal como se presenta en un autor como Adam Smith. Un pensador liberal burgués para quien la conducta del homo economicus no es contradictoria con una ética social basada en la simpatía hacia los demás y el propio interés, donde la conducta individual se ve condicionada por cómo nos ven y como nos juzgan los demás.

Economic Inequality and Risk-Taking Behaviors

2019 ◽  
pp. 201-212
Author(s):  
Jazmin L. Brown-Iannuzzi ◽  
Stephanie E. McKee
Keyword(s):  
Risk Taking ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Risk Taking Behaviors

In Defense of Genopolitics

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES H. FOWLER ◽  
CHRISTOPHER T. DAWES
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Church Attendance ◽  
Behavior Genetics ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Environment Interaction ◽  
Gene Environment Interaction ◽  
National Longitudinal Study ◽  
Gene Environment ◽  
American Political Science

The American Political Science Review recently published a critique of an article we published in the Journal of Politics in 2008. In that article we showed that variants of the genes 5HTT and MAOA were significantly associated with voter turnout in a sample of 2,300 subjects from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Here, we address the critique first by conducting a replication study using an independent sample of 9,300 subjects. This study replicates the gene-environment interaction of the 5HTT gene variant with church attendance, but not the association with MAOA. We then focus on the general argument of the critique, showing that many of its characterizations of the literature in genetics and in political science are misleading or incorrect. We conclude by illustrating the ways in which genopolitics has already made a lasting contribution to the field of political science and by offering guidelines for future studies in genopolitics that are based on state-of-the-art recommendations from the field of behavior genetics.

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