Did Professor John Nash prove that Adam Smith was wrong?

Answer 1

I believe he did.

Answer 2

Because probably only about 1% of the population of the world can completely understand the Mathmatic principals that both men relied on. There is a limit to what most people are capable of comprehending, and I'd be lying if I claimed I could look at Dr. Nash's formulae and explain them any further than they were revealed in "A Beautiful Mind." Besides, Economics is a shakey business. For those who don't think they've heard of Adam Smith, you probably have and didn't realize. Think about "Supply and Demand."

Answer 3

John Nash is remembered for "the Nash Equilibrum", which is a stable state in a N-player game, where if everyone should keep his strategy of playing intact, no one person can improve his outcome by changing only his own. The existence of such states for any N-player game was proven by Nash, when before it was only proven for certain values of N. Existence of such equilbrum states have shown to be of great importance in economics and evolutionary biology, as strategy of players failing to maximize payoffs will be
forced out of the market or environment.

Since Adam Smith wrote that in a free market, people will naturally come around to making the most efficient market, out of self interest, John Nash's work would seem to have only buttressed Smith's arguments, not prove him wrong.

Answer 4

I presume that you are speaking of John Nash's equilibrium and Adam Smith's homo economicus theory. Now, a bit of revision, Nash's equilibrium is more of a normative model (what people should do to maximize their gains) rather than a descriptive model. Consider the famous prisoner's dilemna, I do not think that every pair of prisoners would make the best decisions in their interests. Homo Economicus on the other hand is more of a descriptive model which claims that humans acts to maximize their own utility functions (that is, for their own benefits), but both theory does not contradicts eachother since they are of different
scope (normative vs descriptive). Thus, my answer would be no, John Nash did not disprove Adam Smith.

Answer 5

Adam Smith Was Wrong

Answer 6

No he didn't. Adam Smith's theory defines the behavior of a perfectly competitive market while John Nash described the behavior of the market on oligopolies. One best example that describes Nash's theory is the Prisoner's Dilemma.