As a partial verification that Adam Smith should not be thought of the as founder of free-market economics (Rothbard’s critique in his History of Thought), and a major confirmation of the misdirection of effort by much of the economics profession, Bantam Books choose Professor Krueger to write an introduction to a new reprint of the Wealth of Nations. As quoted in “Recommendations for Further Reading”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, summer 2003, p. 199, Professor Krueger writes:
“If scholarship is to be judged by its impact on future generations, then there is no question that The Wealth of Nations remains an unparalled success. Indeed, most of post war economics can be thought of as an effort to determine theoretically and empirically when, and under what conditions, Adam Smith’s invisible hand turns out to be all thumbs. ... The challange of for modern economists has been to quantify the importance of deviations from the benchmark model of perfect liberty that Smith provided, and to determine whether alternative government would in some sense produce better results than the status quo.”
