ABSTRACT
Adam Smith is generally considered an important, perhaps even the most important, advocate of free trade. At the same time, he is commonly given little credit as a trade theorist. Viner (1937:108-9) suggests that all significant aspects of Smith’s free-trade doctrine are already to be found in the earlier English literature. Robbins (1971:191) argues that Smith’s contribution lacks analytical rigour. Hollander (1973: chapter 9) views Smith’s treatment of the issue as unclear, contradictory and in parts incompatible with the rest of his analysis. The main criticism put forward against him is that he failed to elaborate the principle of comparative costs and based his explanation of the benefits from trade on absolute cost differences only.
