Who is the father of Economics? Why?

Question

Who is the father of Economics? Why?

Answer 1

Adam Smith is God!!!!

Answer 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith

Answer 3

Adam Smith for initiating logical discussion and documentation of issues relative to human and material resources.  His work identifies economics as a science.

Answer 4

Adam Smith is known as “Father of Economics”.

Adam Smith is well-known for his views about how competition and rational self-interest are responsible for economic prosperity. This moral philosopher is famous for two of the important books which have shaped the views of many economists in the following years. "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" was published in 1759 and next year "An Enquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations" was published.

"Wealth of Nations" delved into Capitalism and Free Trade.  It is a magnum opus .

Adam Smith has influenced many writers of the later phase like David Ricardo and Karl Marx.

Adam Smith has considerably influenced the thoughts and ideologies of many famous economist and philosophers with his ideas on economics and moral philosophy.

Hope this helps !

Answer 5

As you can see from the answers the popular answer is going to be Adam Smith.  His book The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776.  Yes he did popularize these ideas but lots of people have written about economics, all the way back to the ancient Greeks (economics came from the Greek words oikos and nomos, meaning the rules of running a household).  

Probably the first was Xenophon.  He wrote sometime around 400 BC.  Aristotle also wrote a good deal about the moral grounds for trade and money-dealings.  After that most of the writings had to do with the ethical issues surrounding trade and interest.  

Fast forward over 1000 years to about 1500-1600.  Mercantilism is now the dominant economic strategy and most economic writing is dedicated to determining ways of maintaining high balances of money and WEALTH.  Enter the Physiocrats who believed that money was not the basis of wealth but SURPLUS, which could only be attained through agriculture, therefore the basis of economies was land.  (Forgive me for skimming over these ideas.)  Writers who fall into these groups - which it should be noted hold opposing beliefs about maintaining wealth - would be Quesnay, Cantillion, and Wm. Petty.  Cantillion, interestingly enough, laid down the basis for much of the study to come in the late 1800s-early 1900s about the quantity theory of money and money flows.

Adam Smith was influenced by all of these characters, and wrote Wealth of Nations as a way of calling out the mercantilists on the fact that their system wasn't working very well.  Smith got a lot of his ideas, particularly on the balance of trade, from David Hume, a close friend of his.  It is also worth noting that Smith was a natural philosopher who was also influenced by Aristotle as well as Thomas Hobbes and John Lock.  It is from them that he comes up with the idea that individual actions are supreme, and infers from that idea that individual actions come together to form a "market" and that everyone acting in their own self-interests will lead to a positive social outcome.  It is worth noting that Economics was not a field of study when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations -- up to that time (and for some time afterwards), it had been a subcategory of Moral Philosophy (Smith was the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow U. in Scotland).

So, in short, a lot of different ideas existed before Adam Smith, and he took a lot of his ideas from those who came before him.  To simply state "Adam Smith is the Father of Economics" is ignorance of those who laid the foundations for the work that he would do, just as much as it would be an injustice to neglect Smith's influence on the generations of economists who came after him.

Answer 6

Adam Smith, but I don't really know why