Episode 101: Aida Ramos

Introduction

0:00Welcome to Smith and Mark's Walk into a Bar, a history of economics podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Jennifer Can, joined today by Cinla Akder. Are you in Ankara right now, Cinla? Hello, Can. Yes, I'm in Ankara, and it's nine o'clock in the afternoon, at the night, or not afternoon, of course. So happy to see you, and I hope it will be a nice episode.

0:37That is, that's bedtime. So nine o'clock is my bedtime. So I am not jealous. We're down one

Guest Introduction

0:45person today. Francois couldn't make it, unfortunately. But nonetheless, I'm really excited for our next guest, who I met back in December at Scott Shields Winter Institute for the History and Philosophy of Economics at the University of Austin. Professor Aida Ramos is Professor of Economics at the University of Dallas, who back then gave this really cool talk on the history of economic thought in Ireland, which we'll also be talking about today amongst many other things. So let's get to it. Professor Aida Ramos, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I am good. Thank you for inviting me. And Cinla's got the first couple of questions,

1:21so I'll let her kick things off. Yes, thank you. And let's start with the first question. And welcome to the show again, Professor. Thank you.

Research Motivation

1:33There seems to be a common thread running through much of your research. For example, a concern for thinkers who have been overlooked, misclassified, or flattened into simplistic narratives. Is that a fair characterization of your motivation for writing on characters like Jonathan Swift and James Stewart? Yeah, I think that's a fair characterization of what has happened in the literature to those authors, Swift and Stewart and a whole bunch of other people who I've happened to write about. But I have to say

2:07that that was never my motivation for why I started looking into them in the first place. It just seemed like as a matter of course, the people I was interested in happened to have been pushed to the side. They'd been marginalized in economic discourse around the history of economic thought. And I think really a larger motivation for me was due to my training at Notre Dame. I was in the graduate program there when it still privileged heterodox voices. And we got a lot of training, of course, in

2:40standard neoclassical economics. But we also had institutionalists. We had many different post Keynesians. We had a great variety of voices there. And I think that that led me to look for alternatives to whatever the mainstream was talking about at any one particular point in time. And I think that that happened without me even realizing it back when I started in my career, but it was already like embedded in me to be on the lookout for alternatives to what the mainstream was saying, while also fully

3:16understanding what the mainstream was saying. So I would say that, yeah, my training had a lot to do with it. And the other part of it, yeah, it's a really interesting question. On the surface, it seems like a simple question. But I guess reflecting on my, not just my professional career, but just, you know, what I've studied throughout my life, I started off in undergrad as a history major, I was doing history and English. And I think my training there also is playing a role in or has continued to play a

3:49role in my economics, because, of course, obviously, I'm doing history of economic thought. So history continues to be of importance to me. But the other thing that has stuck with me is the importance of narrative, and how narratives are formed, who gets to control the narrative, things of that nature, what is being left out of the story. And I guess still one of my old English major impulses is that I want to know the full story. And I could see in my study of the history of economic thought that there were big pieces that had been left out of the story. And that continues to be, I think, a driving

4:25factor in the research that I do today. Thank you. Let's pick up one. And let's talk about a little

Jonathan Swift

4:34bit about Jonathan Swift, your work on Jonathan Swift, and Irish economic thought. Ireland is a frequently ignored in the history of economic thought until around 19th century. John Kenneth Galbraith once joked that the Irish had devoted themselves to higher arts. Your essay on provision and power, Jonathan Swift's economic thought as an alternative to mercantilism, pushes back on this misconception. What is the core of your argument about Swift? And why do you think that he's been miscategorized as

5:12my accomplice? Well, I think that, of course, it's easy to overlook Swift because he is known as a poet. So Galbraith is quasi right in that quote he has that I also used in my article on the matter. But what I learned about Swift, because of course, I was familiar with him as the author of Gulliver's Travels, The Modest Proposal, satirical poetry, so on and so forth. But I found that he had also written a series of very serious pamphlets about Ireland's economic situation in the early 18th

5:43century. You know, he was the dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral for the Church of Ireland, and he was on the front lines of having to deal with people who were in poverty, of providing charity and relief for the poor. So he wasn't just sitting back in an ivory tower somewhere theorizing about what the conditions in Ireland were. He had very intimate knowledge of them. You know, and sometimes he is hyperbolic in what he is saying about the bad conditions, but he's not wrong about what the conditions were, maybe just sometimes about how extreme some of the situations were. So I think

6:18that the big mischaracterization for me is to ignore that he actually seriously addressed real economic issues in Ireland at the time, what the causes were, and that he has very workable solutions, a lot of them based on import substitution that, that we should take seriously, because they echo later developments in the history of economic theory, like with dependency theory in the 1960s and the 1970s. You know, for, for, well, I guess there are people in the audience who might not be familiar with what

6:52that is for former colonies who are trying to jumpstart their economic growth and development to stop depending on the global north for trade and to engage in a, in a program of import substitution with the aim of autarky. So Swift is, he emphasizes that early on in the 1720s, we already have this idea in place. And I think a reason why he tends to get miscategorized is in earlier treatments of Swift in, in the

7:23history of economic thought, like Lewis Landa did write on the Swift, um, back in the fifties and the sixties, but he characterizes him as a mercantilist. And I think it is because Swift is focusing on limiting imports into Ireland. But my argument is that Swift, the impulse for Swift for doing that is different. He isn't using mercantilist rhetoric. He isn't talking about power. His concern is about the provision for people in Ireland and generating economic growth and development in the country.

7:55And, um, you know, there are a small handful of writers who have been writing about Irish economic thoughts. Salim Rashid is one. Um, but he was the lone voice for a long time, I would say in modernity or in more recent years, but, you know, I'm writing about this. Renee Prindergrass does. Patrick Walsh does definitely in history and literary studies. There are a ton of people who are also doing this, but, you know, because they're not trained economists, they're often leaving out the economic side of the pick or the subtleties of macroeconomics. Um, whereas on the economic side,

8:27sometimes we're leaving out the subtleties of the history and, um, you know, just Irish studies in general. And so I'm trying to bring those together in my work, not just on Swift, but also on his contemporaries, um, like the, um, folks who make up the Dublin society, which was organized at this time as a private organization to jumpstart Irish, uh, economic development without having to depend on the government to do it because the government policy wasn't really effective in dealing with the problem at this time. But to directly answer the question about why is he characterized as a

9:01mercantilist? It is because he does stress, um, limiting imports a lot. I think that's the biggest piece, but again, what has been overlooked is why he's making that argument. And a fuller understanding of the mercantilist argument in that, uh, in that, you know, that Swift isn't talking about engaging in trade wars for this. He's not talking about having a commercial empire and defeating, uh, other countries commercially overseas. That's not what the point of it is for him. So that really, he's not using mercantilist rhetoric in this area at all. And he does have a

9:35concern about coins and money, but it's not because, um, he thinks that that's what the wealth of the nation is, even though I know the mercantilists don't really think that either, but it's because there is a shortage of coin in Ireland at this point in time. I want to dig into something that you just said about, about rhetoric. So in this, in this work on Swift, you described, you described Swift's economic program as demand driven and use this, you know, really evocative distinction between mercantilism as a discourse about power and production and Swift's economic thought as a

10:07discourse of provision. So to get us some historical context, what were the main economic differences between say England and Ireland in the early 18th century that made this mercantilist program, not just unhelpful, but counterproductive for Ireland, Ireland. And how did English policies like

English Policies

10:25the Navigation Acts and will trade restrictions actively promote Ireland's underdevelopment?

10:32Oh, I mean, that's a really complex question or not necessarily complex. It's just the answer has a lot of parts to it. But I will stick to the general ones. Definitely, there is a lot of literature out there on the economic history of Ireland at this period, from Ellen Cullen, David Dixon, and James Kelly, Patrick Kelly. There's a lot of work by historians and economic historians on the period. But in general, I would say that, you know, England at this time is an economics is an economic

11:04superpower. Ireland is not. And Ireland is not a colony, but they are being treated as if they were. Officially, they are not a colony, and they never were a colony of England or later of Britain after 1707. But they're being treated as if they were. And the Navigation Acts, you know, which were imposed on the colonies, they affected the American colonies as well. But they're being imposed on Ireland, again, even though they are not, strictly speaking, a colony. Ireland doesn't have, I mean, because

11:37there's a political aspect to this as well. It's not just what is different economically, the politics are also driving some of the economic differences. The Declaratory Act in 1720 gave the English Parliament or the UK Parliament veto power over the Irish Parliament, for instance. So, you know, there was a limit maybe to how much the Irish Parliament could pass laws to help Ireland's economic situation. But of course, the biggest difference is that England is able to craft policy

12:08that helps its trade to grow. Ireland isn't able to do that because of the Navigation Acts. And, you know, and that's purposeful. Charles Davenant in the 17th century wrote the justification for England doing this because, I mean, I don't even know if he really believed this argument since he was trying to get a position at court at the time. But he, you know, says that if Ireland were allowed freer trade, this would hurt our manufacturers in England because Ireland, because it's poor,

12:39has lower prices. So their cost of production would be lower. This would hurt us and our exports, et cetera, et cetera. A very mercantilist argument. Of course, Davenant is one of the main architects of mercantilism in the 17th century. And that continues to be a justification for these policies that are putting a stranglehold on the Irish economy for certain products. So their trade in wool, linen, cattle, it's limited, and in some cases completely severed with the continent,

13:10who they used to have strong trade ties with in these goods. And it limits how many finished products they can make. They could send some unfinished products to England where then English manufacturers would finish them and send them on. But definitely these policies, obviously, they're designed to help England. They are not designed to help Ireland. So that limits the growth that can take place in the country. It limits the amount of employment that's

13:41possible. Also, I mean, a big difference is that, you know, I said England at this time is a superpower. Ireland would be what we consider an LDC due to the high rates of poverty there, high unemployment, especially amongst the rural native Irish, who, you know, were not treated well in the literature at this time. An argument I make about the Dublin Society and Swift and the Anglo-Irish authors at this time is that they actually, for the first time, they are treating the native Irish as part of this

14:16country that includes the Anglo-Irish. And, you know, the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, they have all the power in the land. But at this time, they're recognizing, well, these bad economic policies and these economic conditions, they're affecting all the people of Ireland, not just the Anglo-Irish. So there are a lot of economic differences, but a lot of them do stem from bad policy coming from England. But part of it, as Swift points out, is also due to bad behavior on the part of the Irish upper classes, the landed

14:47gentry who are not spending their money in Ireland. A big difference, I would say, another big difference, if I had to divide it into two, is that wealth generated in England, and then after 1707, it's Britain, but it tends to stay there and recirculate and get reinvested in the country. Whereas the rental income being generated from tenants in Ireland, it leaves the country because they have an absentee landlord problem. Thomas Pryor, who was the founder of the Dublin Society, he wrote a very

15:22well-known pamphlet in 18th century studies, it's well-known, called A List of the Absentees of Ireland, where he lists, you know, who all the absentee landlords are, how much income they've generated, and how much of it they've been spending abroad. And it is, it's quite a chunk of change that is leaving the Irish economy at this point in time. So it is not possible, he argues, in there to have the kind of growth and what we today would call development, that the English criticize the Irish for not having, when, you know, almost a quarter of the income being generated in the country, or more

15:58than that, is leaving the country every year. So, you know, and that's, I'm going to be touching on those issues in the book I'm currently writing on the Dublin Society, which includes a lot on Thomas Pryor as well. But I think that part of it is an overlooked aspect of the problems that Ireland is having. I mean, it's overlooked, at least in the history of economic thought literature on the issues Ireland has in this time period. That's super cool. And I know I'm jumping countries and

16:28people right now. So we were just in Ireland, we're sort of going to Scotland real fast. I wanted to ask you

James Stewart Biography

16:33about this other person that you've been working on, your work on James Stewart. What you did was you sent us a couple of papers you had written about Stewart, and we were wondering, maybe you could actually tell us a bit about Stewart's biography. Who was he and why is he important?

16:50Well, Stewart is important because he's who I wrote my dissertation about, but he's important to the general audience because he wrote the first English language text on political economy. He, you know, he provides the contours for what our discipline is, and what it's going to be. He's the one who chose what topics went into political economy. And he introduced the phrase political economy into English from the French. And yeah, he was really a pioneer in terms of economic thought and trying to put

17:22together, you know, what the contents of political economy should be and how you should approach it. And so he's talking about method, he's talking about content, he's talking about policy. So the work is a bit sprawling, but it's still a foundational text for our discipline. And also, I think you really wouldn't have The Wealth of Nations in its current form without the principles, you know, and it is published in 1767. So nine years before The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith writes to

17:52William Pulteney in his correspondence and says that as he's writing The Wealth of Nations, or I think it's once he's finished it, that he has refuted Stuart's fallacious principles in his work. So I think that because part of The Wealth of Nations is a reaction to what he doesn't agree with in Stuart, you know, again, The Wealth of Nations wouldn't have the form that it has if you don't have the principles first. But as being the first, he really is, you know, as I was part of a multi-authored book that's called Sir James Stuart, First Economist of the Enlightenment. And he

18:27really, he was that. So, you know, he's important in that regard. In terms of his biography, he's a really interesting character, or he was to me, I was interested in him due to his theory. But then the more I learned about him as a person, I he just had he lived a really fascinating life. I guess in terms of what shaped his method, because I've written on this as well, he comes from a long line of very well-placed lawyers in Scotland. One of his ancestors is James Dalrymple, Viscount Stare,

19:00who wrote a really foundational textbook himself on institutional law and the Roman law in Scotland. But his grandfather was the Lord Advocate at the time of the Union. His father was Solicitor General, and he was expected to go on and have a strong place in Scottish legal society as well. But when he was on the Grand Tour, he stayed on the Grand Tour longer than most people do. And he met the Jacobite court in Rome. So he becomes part of the Jacobite rebellion. And he would have been in the

19:34administration, you know, he was already playing administrative roles in the court in exile in Rome, during the rebellion. But yeah, he was an advisor to Bonnie Prince Charlie, he would have had a pretty strong position, I think, in the government there of the if the uprising had succeeded. But of course, it was defeated in 1745 at the Battle of Culloden. And then Stuart gets exiled to the continent. And he writes most of the principles in France and Germany. And so to me,

20:05that was very interesting in tracing where he traveled to, he lived in so many different places, but he did have more extended stays in France and Germany, in several different kingdoms in Germany. And you can see those influences in his work that it it shaped his cosmopolitan outlook. In one of the reviews of the first edition of the principles accused him of being un-English. So in the introduction, you know, which is in the text that we read today, he says that he wanted it to be un-English.

20:38He was trying to put aside any bias he might have and look at things more objectively, to create a text that was applicable to multiple places. And, you know, in a lot of his examples and his descriptions, you can tell it's someone who has actually been to all of these places. When he's talking about the Alps or he's talking about a market town in France, the principles is, I've said before, a very visual work. And part of that is definitely influenced by his lived experience

21:09in a lot of different places. So he was eventually pardoned though, and he got back to Scotland and he reclaimed his stuff. But there was a period of time where he first snuck back into the country and was working as a lawyer in London. And I'm like, that is very dangerous. But he then was pardoned shortly after that. And, you know, and then he published this first book in English on political economy.

21:35In your paper, Luxury Crisis and Consumption, Sir James Stewart and the 18th century luxury debate,

Luxury Debate

21:40you examine a contested debate that interested much of Europe. Why was the nature of luxury such a hot topic in the middle 18th century was chosen? I do want to preface my answer by saying that the luxury debate didn't start in the 18th century. It reaches back into antiquity. And, you know, Christopher Berry is who I would recommend that you read to get more of the entire history of the luxury debate. But in this period, I think that the reason why it was such a hot topic was because

22:13of the consumer revolution, there were more consumer goods available at this point in time than there had been before. And there was an emergent middle class, you know, and Stewart points specifically to the strength of the merchant class in the time in which he's writing who are able to both facilitate the trade in luxury goods, but they're able to buy a lot of them as well. And this isn't in terms of all of human history, it's not usual that, you know, your average person is able to consume all of these luxury goods. They used to be only in the realm of the aristocrats.

22:46Um, another reason for it that, um, I don't quite cover in that article is that, um,

22:55you know, the bursting of the Mississippi bubble, the collapse of the French finances had happened, um, before this, but, but when things were good with that system, when people were buying stock in the Mississippi company, and if you sold it at the right time, uh, there were people who were becoming extraordinarily wealthy, who had just been regular people, some who had been former servants. If they pooled their money together, they bought stock and then they became very wealthy overnight. And this was the first time again, that people from the lower rungs of society were able to

23:28consume luxury goods. So it raised some social questions, um, because in France, definitely there had been a set of sumptuary laws about who could and couldn't consume things. They were not in place at that point in time, but there were questions of, should we bring those back? Um, and of course, after the collapse of the French finances due to the bursting of the Mississippi bubble, you know, in the South sea bubble, uh, bursting also, I think that's what drove the questions about, or that, that, that brought about again, the moral questions about luxury. Of course, in terms of

24:00economic thought and publishing, you had Bernard Mandeville's argument, argument in the fable of the bees and all of the then counter responses to that. So, um, luxury is a hot topic due to what's happening in the literature, but that's a response to what is happening in, in reality, in consumer markets at that point in time. You argued that Stuart's treatment of luxury distinguished

Stuart's Argument

24:24from both French thinkers like Mirabeau and his Scottish contemporaries like David Hume and Adam Smith. Hume saw luxury as a sign of civilizational refinement. Smith mostly took it for granted as a backdrop to productivity, but Stuart focused on luxury as an incentive mechanism, a driver of workers' aspirations and a buffer against economic crisis. Can you explain us, um, a little bit about Stuart's argument? Why is it significant that neither Hume nor Smith made the connection that Stuart made?

25:00Well, I, I don't think that Stuart's position is incompatible with Hume's or with Smith's. I mean, I do think it's interesting that Smith doesn't go into as much detail about this argument as Stuart does and as other writers on luxury do, but I think it's because it's one of the things in the principles that he's okay with what Stuart said. There's no reason to refute it. Um, so Stuart's basic argument is that, well, I mean, of course, part of the, there's a moral argument happening alongside in economic arguments about luxury at this point in time. You know, is luxury consumption a vice?

25:35Is it a virtue? Is it something that should be encouraged? Should it not? You know, in Rousseau, in the meantime, and his group of utopian socialists, they're saying we need to return to a state of simplicity. So people shouldn't be consuming luxury and so on and so forth. And Mirabeau like adds a bit more nuance by saying, well, there is a destructive consumption and then there's productive consumption. And I think that, um, Stuart, because of course he read Mirabeau's friend of man, he is, you know, adding another layer to the discussion that, um, luxury consumption.

26:07Well, I guess it's helpful to know for Stuart, uh, he divides economic society into three general classes. You have the landlords, you have people, the farmers working in agriculture, and then you have the group that he calls the free hands. Those are the people who are manufacturing goods. Um, those are the people who are making everything else. And they're the ones who create the luxury goods. And, uh, for Stuart, this is, it's an luxury is an important engine for a better standard of living for the free hands. And that causes them to innovate and to create

26:41new goods that the other two groups in society want. And by selling those goods to them, yeah, they're able to increase their income. So they're able to buy more food from the farmers. They're able to rent more land from the landlords and the landlords walk away happy because they have their luxury goods. And so do the farmers. So luxury is something that he shows. It can benefit every sector of society, but on the individual level, it plays a role of helping to improve your quality of life. And that that is the, the motivator for doing it, that people aren't creating luxury goods. Um,

27:16you know, that it's not advice that's animating the system here. It's actually something very positive about an improvement in standards of living. So, um, people aspire to live better and to have their families live better. They can see that the way to do it is to create and innovate new goods and get them to market. And by doing so, they increase their incomes so they can buy more stuff from the other two sectors. And you end up having a greater circulation of wealth and an increase in the goods that are being produced, which of course increases overall output, employment,

27:48and income. So he's able to make a similar economic argument to Mandeville, but he's not arguing that it's, uh, due to vice that this is happening. Another move that he makes that still is compatible with Hume and Smith is to say that, you know, whether the consumption of this is vicious or virtuous, you know, coming from vice or virtue, that's a question to be left to moral philosophy and to theology. It's, uh, but what he can do is trace what is the economic impact of this and economically,

28:22what is the role that it's playing? You know, so therefore this is the explanation for why it increases productivity. So Smith doesn't really have to address it that much because it's already been addressed. So I think the significance is just that he goes into more detail. He adds another subtle layer to the discussion than what has been there before. Also, of course, he points out that what is luxury to one person might not be a luxury to someone else. It might be a necessity depending on your circumstances, depending on your, um, career. Um, a specific example he uses has to do with wigs,

28:58which, you know, we've all seen the big wigs at Versailles and definitely some of them are being consumed as luxury goods, but he makes the point that for a lawyer to appear at the bar, you have to, you're required to wear a wig. So for that person, a wig of a certain kind is not a luxury. It's a necessity for him to be able to earn his living. And some professions require you to dress in a particular way. You need different accoutrements that other people might not need. So there is a sense in which what is luxury and what is not is, um, relative to the situation a

29:33person is in. And that's, that's a new emphasis in this discussion where he talks about the political necessary. And, you know, again, situations like that, depending on your circumstances, something might not really be a luxury to you that someone else considers to be a luxury.

29:52Now, I want to ask about the other, uh, the other bit of work that you shared with us, this chapter titled Beyond Montesquieu, Scottish Institutional Legal Thought and Stuart's Spirit

Legal Tradition

30:00of the People, to get a grasp of the legal aspect of, of Stuart's thinking. There you argue that scholars are too quick to attribute Stuart's concept of the spirit of the people, by which he meant the people's morals, government, and manners, to Montesquieu's spirit of the laws. Why do scholars do this, make this jump, first of all? And what was the Scottish institutional legal tradition that you think was the most likely inspiration for Stuart's argument? Well, first I want to say it's not unfair for scholars to do that, to say that Stuart got his influence

30:36from Montesquieu and the spirit of the laws. Uh, Montesquieu, sorry, Stuart is a big fan of Montesquieu. That is clear. If you read the principles, you see how many times he cites Montesquieu. Definitely the names of their two, uh, ideas here are very similar. Um, but what I am saying is that, and I don't, I should have put this sentence in that book chapter, but, but it's that Stuart, as I reflected on it more, he's drawn to Montesquieu because he already has been intellectually formed

31:09to look at, uh, situations in a particular way. And that comes from his legal training, the courses he took in history and law at the University of Edinburgh. And, you know, this research came out of, um, well, it was a rabbit hole I was going down of just a question of, you know, Stuart was trained as a lawyer, very different from Smith who was trained as a moral philosopher. Hume was also trained as a lawyer. So I got curious about what exactly were they learning in the law curriculum at Edinburgh at the time. So I, um, spent, it took years to actually get all

31:45of the primary sources together for this and traveling to Glasgow and Edinburgh. And of course, looking at stuff here, I spent a lot of time in the law library at Notre Dame. Um, this was well past the time I was a grad student though. They have a great law library, but, um, what I found in, uh, looking at the notes of Stuart's professors and who would have been Hume's professors too. Um, he had a law professor named Alexander Bain and a professor of universal law named Charles Mackay.

32:16And, um, for the legal curriculum, you had to take this universal history course. So I looked at their class notes and what's available about, you know, their syllabus. Um, and what I found was that, uh, the main text that was being used in Alexander Bain's course was Viscount Stairs, um, Institutes of the Laws of Scotland, which is based on the outline of Justinian's institutes. But what the text does is to talk about the development of Scots law, which is based

32:48on Roman law, how it developed out of the Roman law. I didn't know until I was doing this research that, and it was thanks to a friend of mine who's an attorney. Um, so I have to give a shout out to Aaron Fricke in Las Vegas, who pointed out to me that Scots law and the English common law are different. And so then I got really curious about what the differences are, how might that have influenced Stuart's outlook. And that led me to all of his legal education. Um, so what this text does though, it talks about the development of the Scots law and how it's based on custom. And then the second

33:21half of all institutional texts is about adaptation of the law to the different customs of the people, which that's exactly what Stuart says about the spirit of the people, that it's the customs, the mores, you know, everything you mentioned, um, of a particular people and that what the policy maker should do is to adapt policies to the spirit of the people, meaning to their customs. So to me, there's a one-to-one relationship there between what Stuart said and what he learned from the institutional legal tradition. The other part of it is that in the universal history courses

33:56with Charles Mackay, um, students were taught, uh, the, to focus on the development of nations. How did they come to be in the circumstances that they're in? And that is something that Stuart keeps returning to in his discussion of the application of the spirit of the people and its importance to understand the circumstances of particular times and places. So, so both of those things together, I feel that absolutely shaped his outlook. So when he came across the spirit of the laws, of course, that was going to be an attractive thing to him.

34:29Speaking of laws, I'm actually really curious about, about the topic of lawhood. So, so I'm really

Lawhood

34:35curious to see what you have to say about the question I'm about to ask here. So Stuart, uh, wrote to Hume in 1767, um, that laws ever have been and ever must be changing according to circumstances, which is reminiscent of what you just told us now. How does the spirit of the people serve as a practical tool for the statesman and the political economist? Is it supposed to connect general economic principles with the specific customs and circumstances of a society? Um, or, you know, what might be a concrete example from Stuart's principles of how something like this is supposed to work?

35:05Well, there are two ways in which, um, it's used. And as you mentioned, the two realms are political economy and policymaking. So for students of political economy, we need to take the spirit of the people into account when we are contemplating economic principles and their application. But the statesman, the, uh, policymaker should also be a student of political economy. And so they're pretty much doing the same exercise. It's just the policymaker actually gets to implement policy.

35:37Um, an example of this that, um, Stuart mentions pretty early on has to do with taxation. Although most of his examples about this have to do with taxation, but he has some other examples as well. And he's saying that for a free nation, so where you don't have totalitarianism, um, you, it is exactly what you said in the question that it's about the adaptation of a general principle to what is the, uh, spirit of the people at the time. Is this something that they're willing to accept or is it something they're not willing to accept? So one of his first examples that appears that I can remember in the text is about

36:13how attacks on land in France would be very unattractive to the landed gentry, uh, because they were, I mean, in there, you have to know the history that the landed gentry in France typically were able to dodge their taxes, avoid them altogether, or they didn't have taxes levied on them, depending on what period of time you're looking at. So for them to have a direct tax on land, according to Stuart would, uh, be lowering this person, you know, an individual French landowner to the level of a peasant because landowners just are not supposed to be taxed.

36:46And that has to do with custom, the long custom of taxation there, whereas, um, he would probably be more willing to pay what we would call a sales tax. So, you know, that's something to take into account. He also talks about how it would probably be the reverse in England that, um, that it should be the other way around. So in, in crafting policy, you have to keep in mind what is the custom of the people because otherwise they're gonna rebel, push back, not pay their taxes, uh, maybe get upset in

37:19other ways that will cause other problems. You know, and he also talks about how if you have a policy that you actually know is going to be good for the people, like the storing up of grain in times of plenty. So you can have some on hand during a famine or during a food shortage, uh, that the people might not be happy about that at that point in time, but you need to understand the spirit of the people, but try to, um, use it to persuade them. Although I have to say, it's not always sweetness and light when he's talking about this, because he is aware about how the spirit of the people could

37:53also be manipulated by a policymaker to, uh, for you to pass just whatever kind of legislation you want to pass. Another taxation example he uses is that in a time of war, like when the war is first starting, especially if you're the aggrieved party, uh, that that's really the time to increase taxes to pay for the war, because most countries would wait until after the war and the debt had been accumulated, then raise taxes after the fact. But he was saying at that point, the spirit of the people is so, uh, gonna be so strong on the side of the country for going to war, people will feel more willing to pay

38:28at that point in time. So it's, it's something that you can just pay attention to. So part of it is really about the temperature of the times and the, um, society that you're dealing with. But the other part of it is about understanding the history and customs of the people and adapting, uh, policy to that so that you can have successful policy that works for people, that people are happy with. You know, he stresses that that the only general maxim that exists is, um, that the wellbeing of the people, the salus of the

39:00people is the law of the land and that that is what should be animating the decision-making of policy makers. And, um, of course this does seem a bit, um, he's putting a lot of faith in policy makers to be that virtuous. And as we know in our lived history, that has not always been the case. As this year is the 250th anniversary of belt of nations. We have to ask some questions on your

Adam Smith

39:29work on Adam Smith, your piece, uh, entitled Smith at 300 Adam Smith on equity, society, and stability focuses on a single passage from belt of nations. I read the passage. No society can be flourishing and happy. And of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. Why did you want to write about Smith on inequality and wages specifically? And why is this passage so important for you?

40:04You know, I, I didn't set out trying to find what Smith's social concerns were. Interesting to me is that I decided to, um, I guess this was driven by research I was doing on Stewart at the University of Glasgow. I was looking for a set of letters by his nephew, David Stewart Erskine, um, who had been, you know, and I discovered in those letters that the nephew had been a student of Adam Smith. And he described Smith in such warm and caring terms that, um, it really brought out to

40:39me a more humane side of Smith as a person. And then I thought that, you know, if you are, if you are a very humane, caring, warm person, it doesn't just disappear in your work. It's not like you can be this way in your personal life. And then you're very mechanistic in your, in your research and writing. So then I became more interested in this other side of Smith and if I could find it in, um, his other writing. And at the same time, I had been doing work on the middle class in the United States

41:10and what was happening with the pay and productivity gap, how on average our workers have become more productive than ever, but you know, real wages are not keeping pace with productivity, unlike our standard neoclassical model. So I went, I looked, I wanted to look into Smith on this issue and then this is what I found that he actually had quite a bit to say about what a fair wage would be and, um, how workers should be treated that are different from, you know, what I see as a character caricature of Smith, not that he's not interested in self-interest and free markets, because of course he is,

41:45he's against bad policy, but he also has this other set of concerns. Also interesting in that research trip to me at Glasgow, I saw the, um, the original of the early draft of the Wealth of Nations, which, um, you know, you can also find in printed form. It would have been less expensive for me to just look it up in the printed form at the back of the lectures on jurisprudence, um, that OUP published a long time ago, but that, um, you know, that he places the questions about workers in the original

42:17draft earlier in the text. So he has a concern about poverty, um, because he is talking about what wages ought to be. So obviously they were not at the point because otherwise he would, he would not be making this argument about how things ought to be if they weren't actually that way. So that, that's what led me to that. Um, and I do think that questions of what is a fair wage for workers? It's an enduring question, you know, it's one and issues of inequality. We are still grappling with these issues today. I always tell my students that part of the work of the course in history of economic

42:51thought is to pick up on these patterns. What are the questions that keep recurring throughout time, um, in different economic works in different places, um, throughout economic history and the history of economic thought. So for me, one about the one about labor and workers, that is one of them. So that's how I came upon it. But, you know, another concept in there, um, has to do with the concept of equity and how it was used in Scottish enlightenment thinking. This is another term that, um, I was helped

43:24in understanding by a lawyer because when I was doing that earlier work on Stewart and, you know, how his law background might've influenced him. When I saw the term equity in his work, I originally was thinking of it as, does he mean equality? Like what exactly does this mean to him? And, uh, then I was informed that, no, it actually means what are you owed? And for the Scots, for the Scottish Enlightenment, it has this, they mean, what are you owed as a member of society? And I think that's,

43:54of course, a really important question to them. It's something that makes the Scottish Enlightenment very appealing to me, that they're asking these questions about how do we make people's lives better? You know, and like, even with the luxury question, an appealing thing about Hume, Stewart and Smith of the question of, well, who should get to consume luxury goods? For them, it's like, well, everybody, like, why, why shouldn't everyone have access to these goods? Why shouldn't we have a better standard of living? Um, and in this case, it's like, well, what do we owe to people as members of society? Um, and then I saw it clearly in Smith's argument about, you know, in the, in the

44:31quote he uses about those who feed, clothe, and house the people, should they not themselves be tolerably well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed, um, which comes back to the issue of wages. So, so it, it bundled together a lot of things I was interested in at the time that I decided to write the article. And, you know, these are things that I think are still important issues for society today. You know, I, I will be in Glasgow in June for the 250th anniversary conference, um, organized by

45:04International Admissions Society. I'm, I'm, I'm very excited. And nowadays I was looking for a hotel in the campus. Maybe you could, uh, give me some advice about it. And I would love to, uh, see this first edition. You meant, you said that it was the first edition of jurisprudence. Well, it's the early draft. Mm-hmm. No, it's not complete. It's, it's an early, it's a part of the early draft. Ah, okay. So I hope I will be also able to see it. Well, I guess, you know, it might be complete. What I was able to see of it was only a part of it.

45:39Ah, okay. Okay. But yeah, no, you should go check it out. Um, the special collections in Glasgow, though, they're at the very top of the library. And the summer that I was there, the elevator in the library was broken. So, um, it was quite a track up. I, it was, I, maybe 13 flights of stairs. It was a labor of love to get up there multiple days. But, um, um, but, you know, I, I stayed at a hotel in Glasgow, which I should have stayed on campus. It would have been much more convenient. Yeah. So maybe you can give me some advices after the show. I can write you about it.

46:14Yeah, sure. And I'm sure this is not, is working also.

46:20So, uh, as you mentioned social concerns, yes, actually, you argue that the passage is interesting for three reasons. First, it reveals Smith's social concerns. Uh, second, it reflects the consistency of his growth theory around the circulation of capital. And third, it connects Smith to broader Scottish enlightenment concerns about social stability. Uh, how these three things relate to each other in Smith's overall project? And does this passage complicate the popular image

46:50of Smith as a prophet of self-interest and free markets? There's a lot in that question, but I will do my best to address it. Um, for me, a key to understanding Smith's economic argument on this, because I do think that Smith, um, has some personal moral convictions about this, but he's posing his arguments without referring to morality. Um, you know, and of course, without referring to religion, because, you know, I mean, I accept that he was a deist, but someone else might discover that he actually had some

47:25form of religion. And of course he has political beliefs that he frames in pure economic arguments. It's always interesting to me when I pick up on those things in the text, but for this particular passage, the key to, for me to understanding it from a, his pure economic argument, what has to do with the capital stock and how he defines it in the wealth of nations, you know, and he has a very lengthy definition. So I'm not going to go into the whole thing, but he talks about the portion that's produced for immediate consumption. And then the portion that's being produced, uh, to generate a revenue,

47:58you know, uh, things that you're going to sell in order to, to make money and useful buildings, um, the bread, the food that you sell clothing, the shoes you sell, et cetera. And he also talks though, throughout the wealth of nations about different occupations, you know, in the early chapter, um, he talks about the butcher, the brewer and the baker, but he also talks about a lot of other like middle-class occupations, like the cobbler, the tailor, um, people working in the pin factory, although they might not have been

48:29middle-class per se, but he points out that it's the people we would say who are middle-class, like the shopkeepers and people who are making things. They're the ones who are creating what he defines as capital. So are people in the lower class. Like if you've had to go work in the mines and extract the, uh, raw metals that the pins are made out of, that is also part of our capital stock. They're the ones who are creating the capital stock and are doing part of the circulation of it. And his theory of growth does depend on the growth and circulation of the capital stock

49:02in addition to the division of labor. But of course he already establishes in book one that, um, the source of the wealth of the nation is labor. So it makes sense that he has an economic concern about labor being able to purchase at least a portion of the goods that are being produced in society and that the fair wage for a workman should be enough to support himself and his family. And, uh, so to not live at subsistence, which that is a counter to a lot of mercantilist writing about in some cases what they thought wages should be, but in other cases, you know, arguments like in, uh,

49:35in Cantillon about, well, wages will just naturally fall to this level anyway, because of changes in population and then the labor force and so on and so forth. So he is presenting an argument that's counter to that. Um, and so macroeconomically, you want people who have produced all these goods in society to be able to buy them from a stability standpoint, because otherwise you're going to have a massive surplus of goods that you're not necessarily going to be able to export all of them. Um, and of course you don't want the people who are creating most of the capital and the capital

50:08stock and circulating it to, to, you know, die of starvation. You want them to be able to survive and to keep on producing more capital into future time periods. So, uh, so there's a macro stability argument here, but I think there is also a social stability argument that's being made here. And then there's also that concern about equity. What do we owe to this section of society? What is owed to labor by our economic society for having created the clothes, the food, the housing, you know,

50:39shouldn't they be able to live in a simple house and have clothing and be fed themselves? Um, I think that, you know, in response to the very last part of that question, this doesn't, uh, counter the self-interest argument or the argument about free markets. Although I do think when people look at Smith only on those two, in those two regards, that it's very reductive of his overall arguments and who he seemed to have been as a person. Um, it gives a very mechanistic view of Smith, you know,

51:12which is one that I had believed in for a while myself. And if you read the wealth of nations with a more open mind, or you set that caricature aside, you see that there's a, he, his humane, his humanity comes through in the text. He's a very humane person. And, um, he does make the argument that it's in the self-interest of the nation to have wages be at a higher level for labor. So, you know, the, the, uh, flow of goods will continue to happen. Growth will continue to happen.

51:43What is beneficial to the lowest members of society, you know, paraphrasing his argument, isn't going to be hurtful to society. You know, the, to, to have their wages be a living wage isn't going to hurt society. He argues it will actually help it. And the economic basis of that, I think, has to do with the contribution of labor to the creation of the capital stock. Um, also that

52:10in terms of the free market issue, because you could say that, well, isn't having a higher wage, the market wage is this lower wage. So this is a distortion of the free market and labor to do this. But if you read the passages that precede his argument about what a fair wage should be, what wages should be, I'm the one who's saying it's, I'm characterizing it as a fair wage, or a living wage. He talks about how employers have conspired against workmen and that they are conspiring to keep wages low. So I think for him, this is actually, it would be a correction of a

52:44distortion that's already happening in the labor market. So it's not counter to his belief in, um, you know, not, not limiting government interference and to self-interest. It is in people's self-interest to do this. I've got a couple more questions for you. And this is a

Oikonomos Journal

53:02really cool thing that you've done. We're going to talk about Oikonomos, a journal about the history of economic thought, which you created and edit specifically for undergraduate students. And so we want to talk about this a little bit. Um, tell us a bit about what your aim was in creating this journal and what has its impact been so far. And on top of that, why in the journal at undergraduate students specifically? Again, a very multi-layered question, but, but when I, I am very happy to answer. Oikonomos was a journal that I, I conceived of in 2020 during the lockdown when I had more time on

53:39my hands compared to now, but, um, I wanted it to, I was reflecting on how every year in my career, I've gotten to teach history of economic thought every year, which is fortunate. Um, and that every year my students are producing, maybe not everyone, but a lot of them are producing amazing papers because I make them do an original research paper in there and that I see it. Some of their peers get to see it when we do a peer review workshop, I might show their work to some other professors,

54:10but other than that, no one else gets to see this good work. So part of it was to just provide a showcase for great undergraduate research in the history of economic thought. I had originally thought of having, uh, or creating a more general, you know, just economics journal for undergraduate students. But then I quickly thought, well, no, because what'll happen there is what happens in the rest of the profession where the history of economic thought papers might get pushed out. And I don't really want that to happen. So I made it specialized to the history of economic thought.

54:42And so part of it was for that reason, just to provide a very accessible showcase it's open access. So anyone who wants to tell their librarian to add it to their database, you can do that at no charge to you. And the other part of it was to, to give students who are thinking perhaps of pursuing academia, to give them experience beforehand in the review process and the revision process and to see how

55:12that happens. Uh, but also we've had a lot of students, um, who, because we have both faculty reviewers, every paper has a faculty reviewers and student reviewers. You know, we've had students who have signed on as reviewers and they have found that to be a really rewarding experience. The, uh, feedback I've gotten from the authors that I have been, you know, I've, I'm in more communication with the student authors than I would be as an editor of a professional journal with, you know, PhDs. Um, so we've had a lot of back and forth and they have told me how this has benefited

55:45them in like getting into graduate school or maybe once they were out. Um, you know, just the, the process of going through again, the review and the revision process. I would, I also want to say as a footnote, students who submit, please give me a stable email address. I can reach you at after you graduate and stick with the process just because you have to do a revision doesn't mean you're going to get rejected. Um, so that was helpful as well. Initially I had a group of student editors helping me too. Um, that I realized was a bit more inefficient, but I had originally wanted students who were

56:21interested in publishing. So I didn't just want econ majors working on this. I also thought, well, our English students are great and anyone or anyone who wants to go into publishing, you know, I teach at a liberal arts university. So, you know, the sky's the limit as to the kinds of things that they can do because they're trained in critical thinking, regardless of what their major is, um, and into how to write well and research. Well, I wanted to give them experience with the publishing business side of things. Um, so that it's had a lot of multiple different impacts for people

56:54who've worked on it and engaged with it in terms of our audience. I have been surprised at how many downloads we have. Like there are hundreds of them on every single piece that I published in our first issue. I thought it would take longer to catch on, but, uh, there clearly is an audience for the work that we're producing there and we only have one issue so far. So, um, I'm in the works of preparing the second issue, but of course I want the journal to continue. So please, anyone in the audience, if you are a student and you have a piece that you would like to submit, please submit it.

57:29Professor is watching. Please encourage your students to submit as well. Uh, why aim it at undergraduate students specifically. Part of it was, um, about fostering the next generation of students. Um, and I find that students become more interested in the history of economic thought when they're doing it, when they're actively researching in it. And for those who are, you know, already thinking of going to graduate school, I wanted them to know that this is something, you know, that they can

58:01specialize in, um, also it'd be a way of, you know, say that you're someone with a doctoral program and you read our journal, you'll start to see some names that you might see applying to your program. So it's a way to connect people with programs, but also really, I wanted to, uh, nurture, foster students, encourage them, give them some experience, um, so that they have a win under their belt that would encourage them to go to graduate school and pursue this line of study, whether it's in economics or history and philosophy of science, or maybe they're doing it through politics, philosophy,

58:35whatever. Um, there's, there's a place for you here. That's absolutely fantastic. This is the last question. So we'll close out. We're going to bring Smith back in your introduction to Oikonomos. You quote Smith on what makes good writing, good writing, namely knowledge of the subject, proper arrangement, expressive description, and writing that exhibits the author's passion, which I totally love. Do you have any other advice that you'd like to give to undergraduate students starting to write about the history of economics? I have a lot of advice, but I will try to narrow

59:06it down. Um, but I do want to reiterate the part about passion. You have to choose something that is interesting to you, that you care about, that's going to sustain you over maybe an individual work, or it could sustain you, you know, over your career. The very first paper I wrote in my history of economic thought class at Notre Dame for Phil Mirowski was on Sir James Stewart. And it was about how or why he got left out of the cannon. And, you know, if Phil had said no to me that I couldn't do that, my whole life might be different right now. So I am grateful to him that he allowed

59:39me to continue to pursue that line of inquiry. Cause you know, then from that paper grew that it just, I continued to explore more things. My dissertation proposal was about Stewart. And of course my dissertation, now my career, a big part of it is about Stewart. Um, but it's also led me to other things, other wonderful things. So I guess connected to that, um, choose your mentor as well. You want someone who's going to give you good intellectual formation, who is going to give you a feedback,

1:00:09who isn't just going to let you get away with things. Um, and so that's another part of it, but also in terms of the passion, like some of this work, it's been a great adventure for me, but you know, it's, it can be very hard work. Like I spent, as I said, about two years tracking down sources for, um, my institutional thought paper. There are other times when I was writing my dissertation that I would spend, I remember one time I spent a month looking for a source and trying to explain a particular contextual situation while I was doing other writing and I was teaching

1:00:41at the same time. All of that research became one footnote in the final dissertation. But, um, what really carried me through was my passion for the subject, my curiosity about the subject. So don't feel that you have to do, although sometimes you might not have a choice. Your advisor might force you into a particular area, but, uh, you should, you should pursue what is of interest to you because sometimes this is going to get difficult and your passion for the subject is what is going to carry you through. Um, my other thing about choosing your mentors, I mean,

1:01:14definitely Phil was an amazing mentor and I think part of, you know, my pursuit, my strong pursuit of primary sources, my concern about crafting my own writing well, that comes from my training, uh, from him. You want good intellectual formation. Don't back away from that just in the name of trying to get it done easily. Um, sometimes good work comes with a lot of sacrifice. And, um, another piece of advice that was important for me was to read outside of economics, be willing to talk to other people,

1:01:49other scholars in other fields, for instance. Um, it just was coincidental or maybe providential that at the time I was in graduate school, um, the Irish studies program at Notre Dame had one of the top scholars in Irish studies there, Seamus Dean, who happened to be teaching a class on the act of union between Scotland and England and the later one between Ireland and England. And I knew that this had played a role in some way in, um, Stewart's development of political economy. And that's part of

1:02:20the argument of my dissertation, but, um, understanding fully the act of union also led much later on to my writing of my book, shifting capital, which is about mercantilism and how mercantilist zero sum thinking influenced, uh, the drafting of the act of union and the bad deal that Scotland got out of it. But I was really curious, why did people agree to this? If sometimes you can see economically, it's got some bad terms in that agreement, although in the end there, there were benefits, but, um,

1:02:52so that book became kind of a prequel to my dissertation, even though I wrote it much, much later on. But for the Irish studies thing that then led me to, um, having more conversations with Seamus Dean who introduced me to the work of Swift. I then did an NEH seminar at Notre Dame later on that was about Ireland in this period. And that's where I learned a lot more about Swift and I pursued that, but it was also Seamus Dean who introduced me to, you know, and he recognized that there was another Irish studies scholar there who would be better, uh, for my dissertation committee.

1:03:24So I started working with Luke Gibbons who first introduced me to the Dublin society. So, you know, if I had never reached out and had these other conversations, a big part of my research agenda right now would not be there. My career would have taken a different trajectory. But I think also, just because we are studying ideas in context, it's important to have other perspectives than just talking to other economists. So that's, that's one of my big pieces of advice. And something that I think has also come out from this conversation is be willing to see things differently. Don't just

1:03:59assume that you're right in how you're seeing a particular theory or a thinker. Um, you know, because that I was able to change my mind about Smith and, um, that's important too. So, but again, I think one of the most important ones is to, to be passionate about your work and, uh, also remember that writing is a craft. You have to work on that as well. And when you're done, submit your work to my journal. All fantastic advice, not only for undergraduates, for those of us, but also for those of us who are

1:04:34long past being undergraduates. Aida, thank you so much for stopping by today and indulging us with, with our questions about all these things, about, about so many topics and about your journal. So, so thank you. Thank you for having me. I, I love obviously talking about these things. I know your podcast has a time limit. I could talk for several more hours, but, but I will not, but thank you for having me. It was a great conversation. Thank you very much.

1:05:04Join us again next month for another episode of Smiths and Marks Walk into a Bar, a History of Economics podcast.