250 years of Smith’s work: How digital platforms bring us back to the core of economic science

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s “An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations”, the work that had laid the foundations of economic science. The three factors of production Smith implicitly introduced — labor, land, and capital — no longer operate in their pure form: the digital and even non-digital sectors generate no profit without data, technology, and infrastructure, which calls into question the universality of the original system. This gap cannot be ignored: an economy in which the digital sector, comprising three times fewer industries than the physical sector, contributes twice as much labor input to output growth and in some cases leads in productivity growth rates is structured differently from the one Smith described. According to BEA–BLS data for 63 U.S. industries over 1997—2023, this gap is not cyclical: it registers a structural change in the very system of factors of production. The central question of this paper is not historical reconstruction but method: what would Smith have said had he seen digital platforms, and how would he have rethought his own categories? The same question is posed regarding the economists Smith directly influenced and who developed the theory of market organization, the firm, and consumer surplus — Marx, Marshall, Pigou, Schumpeter, Coase. The paper proposes a procedure of returning to the theoretical core that makes it possible to trace the evolution of factors of production from the original triad to a system that includes data, technology, and infrastructure, and to test this evolution through the sequence of these theorists. The analysis shows that the propositions formulated by the classics retain their validity on the whole yet begin to operate under conditions where market boundaries become, in essence, infinite. A transparent market open to small players has emerged, and economic science must reckon with this, and market power is shifting to the ownership of the digital assets that underpin it. Economic analysis of the information society, digital platforms, and artificial intelligence requires rebuilding the “hard core” of science, abandoning its textbook-based learning. Ultimately, such analysis is essential for informed decision-making, but economists must overcome the disease of neglecting the fundamental foundations of their theory.

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