Blog
Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of Productivity Growth’
The full title of Adam Smith’s major work is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (the “WoN”). Today we observe governments
March 23, 2026
Documents
Insights into Regulation
Adam Smith and the Navigation Acts
Marking the 250th anniversary year of the publication of the Wealth of Nations, in the second of a series of blogs on the contemporary relevance of Adam Smith’s work, the Insights team take a look at his nuanced, changing assessment of the English Navigation Acts
February 24, 2026
Insights into Regulation
Revisiting Adam Smith’s Four Principles of Taxation
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith put forward four general principles that he judged a tax system should satisfy. While the economic system then was much smaller and much less complex than now – the revenue required by the state funded a much narrower range of activities – principles are relatively enduring across changes in contexts.
January 30, 2026
Studies in Regulation
What happens when digital competition policy meets AI?
In this paper, Daniel Pryor argues that competition interventions in digital markets have often been premised on faulty economic assumptions and therefore led to various unintended consequences
November 2, 2025
Past Learnings
Commercial Society and its Internal Enemies – A Smithian Synopsis
In this new piece in our Past Learnings Series, George Yarrow discusses the publicly perceived “untrustworthiness” of politicians
July 4, 2025
Insights into Regulation
On tariffs and tanks – M. Bastiat vs. Mr Trump
Scaling geologic time to (say) one year, homo sapiens has existed for less than an hour. In that twinkling of an eye, we have developed some capacity for foresight – an enormous evolutionary leap in one of nature’s creatures.
February 13, 2025
Past Learnings
Fabellia Revisited: A Thought Experiment on the Regulation of Migration Flows
The 6th piece in our series Past Learnings, this piece is an extensive re-working of a paper first published in September 2016, which was likewise a thought experiment on a potential regulatory approach to the control of migration flows
January 21, 2025
Past Learnings
Past Learnings: Simple stories, complex systems and corrupted economics
The RPI’s latest piece in our Past Learnings Series discusses the complexity of economic systems and the common inability of policy-makers to fully account for that complexity when making policy changes.
October 29, 2024
Insights into Regulation
The Costs of Change
“Change” was the slogan of the British Labour Party in the recent General Election. It certainly didn’t do serious damage to electoral prospects; but it
October 21, 2024
Materials from Conferences
When is it important to recognise that not every x is a y?
This is a write-up of the session “Statistics in Regulation and Policy“, given at the RPI Annual Competition and Regulation Conference 2024. This may seem
October 11, 2024