This year marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith, the founding father of modern economics. It comes at a time when the global economy faces several daunting challenges.
Against this backdrop, Smith's tercentenary is an opportunity to reflect on his invaluable insights into the dynamics of economic growth and consider whether they can help us understand the current moment. At the heart of Smith's theory of economic growth, outlined in the first chapter of his seminal work The Wealth of Nations, is the specialisation facilitated by the division of labour. By breaking down production into smaller tasks -- a process illustrated by Smith's famous example of the pin factory -- industrialisation enabled enormous gains in productivity.
