The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776, much the same way Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin developed their own scientific revolutions. In honor of the 300th anniversary of Adam Smith's birth, Mark Skousen, professor of economics at Chapman University, will describe this revolution and its impact on the global economy and government policy, identifying the ways in which Smith’s laissez-faire model has succeeded and failed in terms of free trade and globalization, balanced budgets, the growth of government, inflation and monetary policy, the business cycle, and environmental issues. He will also compare the Adam Smith invisible hand model with other competing schools of thought, including Keynesian and Marxist.
Mark Skousen holds the Doti-Spogli Endowed Chair of Free Enterprise at Chapman University. He earned his Ph.D. in monetary economics at George Washington University. In 2018, he was awarded the Triple Crown in Economics for his work in theory, history, and education, after receiving "My Favorite Professor Award" at Chapman. He has taught at Columbia Business School, worked for the government (CIA), non-profits (president of FEE), and been a consultant to IBM.
He has written for the Wall Street Journal and a regular column for Forbes magazine. He is the author of over 25 books, including The Making of Modern Economics and The Maxims of Wall Street. He has been editor in chief of an award-winning investment newsletter, Forecasts & Strategies, since 1980. He produces “FreedomFest, the world’s largest gathering of free minds,” every July in Las Vegas.
Influenced by his work, the federal government began publishing Gross Output (GO) every quarter along with GDP. It is the first macro statistic of the economy to be published quarterly since GDP was invented in the 1940s.
View Video: YouTube with Mark Skousen
