IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/koe/wpaper/1223.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Malthus's Criticism of Adam Smith and Dynamic Mechanism of Population in the First Edition of Principle of Population

Author

Listed:
  • Taro Hisamatsu

    (Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University)

Abstract

Two issues are addressed in this paper. First, we analyze with a simple mathematical model Thomas Robert Malthus's critique of Adam Smith, the most theoretically discussed part in the first edition of Principle of Population. Second, by introducing a differential equation for the dynamics of price, unlike most of the other present scholars, we explain Malthus's dynamic mechanism of population more in detail, and thereby reconsider and reinforce his idea of encouraging investment in agriculture discussed in his critique of Smith. Thereby, we show that under the assumption set forth by Malthus, economic development created by investment in agriculture is more desirable compared to investment in manufacturing, in the view of social welfare; that Malthus's idea implied some type of precursory Keynesian idea, that is, the creation through policy of effective demand to agriculture, not to manufacture, leads to economic growth with improvement in social welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Taro Hisamatsu, 2012. "Malthus's Criticism of Adam Smith and Dynamic Mechanism of Population in the First Edition of Principle of Population," Discussion Papers 1223, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.
    • Handle: RePEc:koe:wpaper:1223
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Malthus; Smith; mechanism of population; agriculture; dynamics of price;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B12 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Classical (includes Adam Smith)
    • B16 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Quantitative and Mathematical

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:koe:wpaper:1223. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kimiaki Shirahama (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fekobjp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.