So, when did we start thinking of Smith as being the “theorist of the invisible hand” (and, around the same time, forget all his
opposition to strict laissez-faire)? Gavin Kennedy’s historical work places the disjuncture in an oral tradition in England and the US in the late 19th to early 20th century. The myth remained somewhat confined until the publication of Samuelson’s extremely influential undergraduate text,
Economics in 1948, which brought the myth to the masses (
Kennedy 2010).
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