Roger Sandilands wrote:  
>Robbins (1932, pp.68-69) wrote that although  Adam Smith's great work   
>"professed to deal with the causes of  the wealth of nations, and did in   
>fact make many remarks on the general question of the conditions of   
>opulence which are of great importance in any history of applied   
>Economics, the central achievement of his book was his demonstration of   
>the mode in which the division of labour tended to be kept in equilibrium   
>by the mechanism of relative prices - a demonstration which, as Allyn   
>Young has shown, is in harmony with the most refined apparatus of the   
>modern School of Lausanne. The theory of value and distribution was really   
>the central core of the analysis of the Classics, try as they might to   
>conceal their objects under other names'  
>  
>  
>On the contrary, the central core of Smith was indeed to demonstrate the   
>causes of the wealth of nations and how this wealth grew - by abolishing   
>restraints on trade. Allyn Young took up his insights on the way that   
>specialisation and the division of labour (in its rich and varied modern   
>forms) is limited by, but also defines, the size of the market. Hence   
>"change breeds change and every new adjustment paves the way for another."  
  
  
  
I very much enjoyed Roger Sandilands' post on Allyn Young's view of   
Smith.  Perhaps Sandilands'  concerns can focus this discussion some.  Had   
we gone the way of Smith, in Young's reading, and Young himself, wouldn't   
the "science of choice" have been  a less apt description of  what we would   
then be doing?  By focusing on strategic complementarity and multiple   
equilibria,  this approach would have gravitated naturally - or so it seems   
to me - to looking at the irreducibly social mechanisms of equilibrium   
selection. Without increasing returns, with a unique equilibrium,  tastes   
and technology - the fundamentals - suffice for explanation - hence the   
"science of choice."  
  
Kevin Quinn,  
Hired Price-fighter!