ContentsINTRODUCTION AND PLAN OF THE WORK.BOOK I. OF THE CAUSES OF IMPROVEMENT IN THE PRODUCTIVE POWERS OF LABOUR, AND OF THE ORDER ACCORDING TO WHICH ITS PRODUCE IS NATURALLY DISTRIBUTED AMONG THE DIFFERENT RANKS OF THE PEOPLE.CHAPTER I. OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR.CHAPTER II. OF THE PRINCIPLE WHICH GIVES OCCASION TO THE DIVISION OF LABOUR.CHAPTER III. THAT THE DIVISION OF LABOUR IS LIMITED BY THE EXTENT OF THE MARKET.CHAPTER IV. OF THE ORIGIN AND USE OF MONEY.CHAPTER V. OF THE REAL AND NOMINAL PRICE OF COMMODITIES, OR OF THEIR PRICE IN LABOUR, AND THEIR PRICE IN MONEY.CHAPTER VI. OF THE COMPONENT PART OF THE PRICE OF COMMODITIES.CHAPTER VII. OF THE NATURAL AND MARKET PRICE OF COMMODITIES.CHAPTER VIII. OF THE WAGES OF LABOUR.CHAPTER IX. OF THE PROFITS OF STOCK.CHAPTER X. OF WAGES AND PROFIT IN THE DIFFERENT EMPLOYMENTS OF LABOUR AND STOCK.CHAPTER XI. OF THE RENT OF LAND.BOOK II. OF THE NATURE, ACCUMULATION, AND EMPLOYMENT OF STOCK.CHAPTER I. OF THE DIVISION OF STOCK.CHAPTER II. OF MONEY, CONSIDERED AS A PARTICULAR BRANCH OF THE GENERAL STOCK OF THE SOCIETY, OR OF THE EXPENSE OF MAINTAINING THE NATIONAL CAPITAL.CHAPTER III. OF THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL, OR OF PRODUCTIVE AND UNPRODUCTIVE LABOUR.CHAPTER IV. OF STOCK LENT AT INTEREST.CHAPTER V. OF THE DIFFERENT EMPLOYMENTS OF CAPITALS.BOOK III. OF THE DIFFERENT PROGRESS OF OPULENCE IN DIFFERENT NATIONSCHAPTER I. OF THE NATURAL PROGRESS OF OPULENCE.CHAPTER II. OF THE DISCOURAGEMENT OF AGRICULTURE IN THE ANCIENT STATE OF EUROPE, AFTER THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.2CHAPTER III. OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF CITIES AND TOWNS, AFTER THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.CHAPTER IV. HOW THE COMMERCE OF TOWNS CONTRIBUTED TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE COUNTRY.BOOK IV. OF SYSTEMS OF POLITICAL

Amartya Sen looks at the Asian experience in a broad framework, dealing both with successes and failures. He sees development as a process of enhancement of human freedoms of various kinds, which are intrinsically important in themselves and which are mutually supportive of each other. They call for a multiplicity of working institutions, of which the market is an important part, but which needs extensive and many sided supplementation. This paper was first presented at ISEAS Second Asia & Pacific Lecture in 1999.

How do you get your dinner? That is the basic question of economics. When economist and philosopher Adam Smith proclaimed that all our actions were motivated by self-interest, he used the example of the baker and the butcher as he laid the foundations for 'economic man,' arguing that the baker and butcher didn't give bread and meat out of the goodness of their hearts. It's an ironic point of view coming from a bachelor who lived with his mother for most of his life—a woman who cooked his dinner every night.The economic man has dominated our understanding of modern-day capitalism, with a focus on self-interest and the exclusion of all other motivations. Such a view point disregards the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning and cooking. It insists that if women are paid less, then that's because their labor is worth less.A kind of femininst Freakonomics, Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? charts the myth of economic man—from its origins at Adam Smith's dinner table, its adaptation by the Chicago School, and its disastrous role in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis—in a witty and courageous dismantling of one of the biggest myths of our time.

This is an excerpt from the 4-volume dictionary of economics, a reference book which aims to define the subject of economics today. 1300 subject entries in the complete work cover the broad themes of economic theory. This extract concentrates on the theory of the invisible hand.

From the former economics columnist for Harper’s and The New York Times, a bold indictment of some of our most accepted mainstream economic theories—why they’re wrong, and how they’ve been harming America and the world. Ideas have the power to change history. But what happens when they are bad? In a tour de force of economics, history, and analysis, Jeff Madrick shows how theories on austerity, inflation, and efficient markets have become unassailable mantras over recent years, to the detriment of the country as a whole. Working backwards from the Great Recession, Madrick pulls no punches as he reconsiders seven of the greatest false idols of modern economic theory, from Say’s Law to Milton Friedman, illustrating how these ideas have been damaging markets, infrastructure, and individual livelihoods for years. Trenchant, sweeping, and empirical, Seven Bad Ideas resoundingly disrupts the status quo of modern economic theory.

This book could be called "The Intelligent Person's Guide to Economics." The title expresses Duncan Foley's belief that economics at its most abstract and interesting level is a speculative philosophical discourse, not a deductive or inductive science. Adam's fallacy is the attempt to separate the economic sphere of life, in which the pursuit of self-interest is led by the invisible hand of the market to a socially beneficial outcome, from the rest of social life, in which the pursuit of self-interest is morally problematic and has to be weighed against other ends.