The Wealth of Nations

A foundational work of capitalism that irrevocably shaped the study of economics, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), often shortened to The Wealth of Nations, lays out Scottish economist Adam Smith’s analysis on how and why nations build and keep wealth.

It is one of the first works that established a system of political economy, or the study of economic conditions with regard to the surrounding political structure. Within the work, Smith defines many key ...