Vernon Smith Reading Suggestions

2002 Nobel laureate Vernon Smith is visiting Samford today. If you want to get started understanding Dr. Smith and his work,

Adam Smith's Theory of Society (forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan). I'm excited about this book. A student sent me a link to the talk below, which will probably be a lot like the discussion we have this afternoon.

Humanomics: Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations for the Twenty-First Century (with Bart J. Wilson). Economics, humanized. They explain how Smithian concepts like "sentiments, fellow feeling, and a sense of propriety" make a richer social science possible.

Rationality in Economics: Constructivist and Ecological Forms. It's a book-length treatment of his Nobel lecture "Constructivist and Ecological Rationality in Economics," which is an intellectual tour de force in its own right.

The Evidence of Things Not Seen. It's a short science-and-religion book based on a lecture and discussion at the Acton Institute. Suffice it to say, Smith is skeptical of mere materialism, and in an essay for Liberty Fund titled "What Adam Smith Means to Me," he explains that for Smith, spontaneous order has divine origins.