The economics of education in Adam Smith’s “Wealth of nations”

In “intellectual history” perspective, Adam Smith was able to find out the idea of human capital especially from microeconomic point of view. The result originates thanks to a rudimentary use of the category of the human capital. However, on the basis of other premises this essay attempts also to bring to the fore that the results of Smith’s reflection change according to a macro point of view. Paying attention to the increasing of the social product, the importance of knowledge and human resources gains a crucial role in explaining the growth. From this second perspective, human capital realizes the incorporation of the technological element not into the labour but into the capital factor. Under this light Smith is more strictly linked to an approach familiar with the neoclassic theories of growth.