About this episode

Yueran Ma discusses the evolution of capitalism 250 years after Adam Smith's insights, highlighting the shift from small producers to concentrated production and diffused ownership.

Two hundred fifty years after The Wealth of Nations, capitalism looks nothing like Adam Smith imagined (and nothing like Karl Marx predicted, either). Smith envisioned small, decentralized producers, while Marx foresaw concentration dominated by the rich. In this lecture, Yueran Ma of Chicago Booth draws on centuries of global data to show how production concentrated while ownership diffused, and the giants at the top keep getting toppled.

People in this episode

Guest: Yueran Ma

Topics covered

• capitalism
• economic history
• production concentration
• ownership diffusion
• global data analysis

Keywords

• capitalism
• Adam Smith
• Karl Marx
• economic transformation
• production
• ownership
• global data

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Chicago Booth

Books & works: The Wealth of Nations

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