You might be wondering what an eighteenth-century book on morality and human nature has to do with economics, Smith’s most famous legacy. Behavioral economists today do their work at the border between economics and psychology, which is very Smithian territory. But most economists in the twenty-first century try to predict interest rates, suggest policies to reduce unemployment and soften its sting, or forecast the next quarter’s GDP. Sometimes they try to explain why the stock market went up or down. They’re not particularly good at any of these things, and they often disagree on the best
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