Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Eamonn Butler, co-founder and long-time director of the Adam Smith Institute, in a wide-ranging conversation marking the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations.
Eamonn and Filippo reflected on the enduring legacy of Adam Smith, arguing that Smith’s core insight—that prosperity is driven by voluntary exchange, competition and individual effort—remains as relevant today as it was in 1776. He traced how Smith helped overturn mercantilist thinking, laid the foundations of modern economics as a discipline grounded in observation and reason, and influenced both policy and practice, from 19th-century free trade to contemporary debates on protectionism, economic nationalism and the politicisation of trade.
Butler warned that while economists broadly agree on the gains from free markets, political incentives increasingly pull policy in the opposite direction, often to the detriment of consumers, productivity and long-term growth. This is in full display in policies adopted on both side of the Atlantic
The discussion also ranged across Butler’s long-standing interest in economic ideas and entrepreneurship. Drawing on his book on schools of economic thought—discussed during the interview and available at the IEA —he argued for the value of pluralism in economics, from classical liberalism and Keynesianism to the Austrian and Chicago schools, each offering different lenses on incentives, cycles and individual decision-making.
Butler emphasised that economies are not machines driven by aggregates, but ecosystems shaped by entrepreneurs, confidence and incentives, with taxation and regulation playing a decisive role.
Looking ahead, he outlined how the Adam Smith Institute is marking the anniversary year, including a forthcoming edited academic volume and his own innovative contribution: a graphic-novel adaptation of The Wealth of Nations, designed to bring Smith’s ideas to a new and younger audience. Together, the conversation offered both a timely defence of Smithian principles and a reminder of their practical relevance for growth, opportunity and poverty reduction in the modern world.
Eamonn Butler is Director of the Adam Smith Institute and has degrees in economics, philosophy and psychology, gaining a PhD from the University of St Andrews in 1978. During the 1970s he worked on pensions and welfare issues for the US House of Representatives, and taught philosophy in Hillsdale College, Michigan, before returning to the UK to help found the Adam Smith Institute.
Eamonn is author of books on the pioneering economists Milton Friedman, F A Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Adam Smith, and co-author of Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls and books on intelligence testing.
He contributes to the leading UK print and broadcast media on current issues, and his recent popular publications The Best Book on the Market, The Rotten State of Britain and The Alternative Manifesto have attracted considerable attention.
He has also contributed articles to national magazines and newspapers on subjects ranging from health policy, economic management, taxation and public spending, transport, pensions, and welfare.
