Invisible Hand - Economists' Interpretation of The "invisible Hand" Quotation

Economists' Interpretation of The "invisible Hand" Quotation

The concept of the "invisible hand" is nearly always generalized beyond Smith's original discussion of domestic versus foreign trade. Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, called Smith's Invisible Hand "the possibility of cooperation without coercion." Kaushik Basu has called the First Welfare Theorem the Invisible Hand Theorem.

The theory of the Invisible Hand states that if each consumer is allowed to choose freely what to buy and each producer is allowed to choose freely what to sell and how to produce it, the market will settle on a product distribution and prices that are beneficial to all the individual members of a community, and hence to the community as a whole. The reason for this is that self-interest drives actors to beneficial behavior in a case of serendipity. Efficient methods of production are adopted to maximize profits. Low prices are charged to maximize revenue through gain in market share by undercutting competitors. Investors invest in those industries most urgently needed to maximize returns, and withdraw capital from those less efficient in creating value. All these effects take place dynamically and automatically.

It also works as a balancing mechanism. For example, the inhabitants of a poor country will be willing to work very cheaply, so entrepreneurs can make great profits by building factories in poor countries. Because they increase the demand for labor, they will increase its price; further, because the new producers also become consumers, local businesses must hire more people to provide the things they want to consume. As this process continues, the labor prices eventually rise to the point where there is no advantage for the foreign countries doing business in the formerly poor country. Overall, this mechanism causes the local economy to function on its own.

Some economists question the integrity of how the term "invisible hand" is currently used. Gavin Kennedy, Professor Emeritus at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, argues that its current use in modern economic thinking as a symbol of free market capitalism is not reconcilable with the rather modest and indeterminate manner in which it was employed by Smith. In response to Kennedy, Daniel Klein argues that reconciliation is legitimate. Moreover, even if Smith did not intend the term "invisible hand" to be used in the current manner, its serviceability as such should not be rendered ineffective. In conclusion of their exchange, Kennedy insists that Smith's intentions are of utmost importance to the current debate, which is one of Smith's association with the term "invisible hand". If the term is to be used as a symbol of liberty and economic coordination as it has been in the modern era, Kennedy argues that it should exist as a construct completely separate from Adam Smith since there is little evidence that Smith imputed any significance onto the term, much less the meanings given it at present.

The former Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, D. H. MacGregor, argued that:

The one case in which he referred to the ‘invisible hand’ was that in which private persons preferred the home trade to the foreign trade, and he held that such preference was in the national interest, since it replaced two domestic capitals while the foreign trade replaced only one. The argument of the two capitals was a bad one, since it is the amount of capital that matters, not its subdivision; but the invisible sanction was given to a Protectionist idea, not for defence but for employment. It is not surprising that Smith was often quoted in Parliament in support of Protection. His background, like ours today, was private enterprise; but any dogma of non-intervention by government has to make heavy weather in The Wealth of Nations.

Harvard economist Stephen Marglin argues that while the "invisible hand" is the "most enduring phrase in Smith's entire work", it is "also the most misunderstood."

Economists have taken this passage to be the first step in the cumulative effort of mainstream economics to prove that a competitive economy provides the largest possible economic pie (the so-called first welfare theorem, which demonstrates the Pareto optimality of a competitive regime). But Smith, it is evident from the context, was making a much narrower argument, namely, that the interests of businessmen in the security of their capital would lead them to invest in the domestic economy even at the sacrifice of somewhat higher returns that might be obtainable from foreign investment. . . .

David Ricardo . . . echoed Smith . . . Smith's argument is at best incomplete, for it leaves out the role of foreigners' investment in the domestic economy. It would have to be shown that the gain to the British capital stock from the preference of British investors for Britain is greater than the loss to Britain from the preference of Dutch investors for the Netherlands and French investors for France."

According to Professor Emeritus William Grampp of the University of Chicago,

The invisible hand is not a power that makes the good of one the good of all, and it is not any of a number of other things it is said to be. It is simply the inducement a merchant has to keep his capital at home, thereby increasing the domestic capital stock and enhancing military power, both of which are in the public interest and neither of which he intended. Smith's exposition discloses how his rhetorical sallies could disfigure his economics, confuse his argument for free trade, and make him play fast and loose with facts and the ideas of others. . . . here is little or no support in what Smith wrote that can substantiate the interpretations it has been given, thus offering another example of how the words of a great man can mean different things to his readers and can be made into something that he himself would not recognize.

According to Emma Rothschild, Smith was actually being ironic in his use of the term. Warren Samuels described it as "a means of relating modern high theory to Adam Smith and, as such, an interesting example in the development of language."