(NB: Leonardo da Vinci - right on the photo in a memorable game with Adam Smith to the left - in which he tried to explain the principle of division of labor)
Staying in Tuscany recently, I am concerned, like many people in the same situation, to the exceptional history of Florence in particular during Renaissance and, more specifically to the artist who symbolizes perhaps the most this time, the intellectual influence of Florence and the concept of humanism, namely Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Vinci is a small village in Tuscany where comes the great artist, at least this post you will learn if you do not know, drive).
Everything has been said, and probably a lot of stupid things too, on what was protean genius Leonardo and I'm not gonna do a biography, the reader, this is not my purpose, others being hagiographers probably much more knowledgeable than me. But the guy has always fascinated since childhood, if only for his exceptional talent for drawing, being a bit sensitive to this art, but because it brought together two characteristics that seem almost unattainable, that of being a brilliant artist but also be a scientist complete. All this is well known, but do not be impatient reader, I come to regard this central ticket.
Leonardo had almost all the qualities and talents all, but if there is no doubt one that it was probably lacking is the ability to complete the works he began, that in almost every area that approached. Anecdotally, Michelangelo, jealous to death of his elder, had also publicly mocked his inability to complete the monumental equestrian statue of Francesco Forza company in 1492 and never finished, while he had managed to complete his monumental David. Besides, if the artist had an unquestionable reputation, he had also, at least in Florence, the reputation of never finish what he undertook.
In fact, this inability to finish was not the product of any laziness - The man was a workaholic - or exacerbated dilettantism, but because it seemed to make everything himself, beyond the technical knowledge of his time, in every stage of a project it was implementing. Should he make a mural, it was just as interested in the composition and preliminary studies that support it, such as a wall. If the wall seemed deficient, he studied at length the ways to solve problems, while interested in different chemical or physical processes which diverted length the main object. Many projects were undertaken as unfinished. Leonardo is still the absolute figure of Engineering course - painter, sculptor, musician, architect, engineer, designer, anatomist, (al) chemist, do not throw more! especially when we know he was self-taught -. But, and this is the gist of my post, it remains the perfect symbol of humanism, there is a real paradox in that we still dream of what might have been complete if had agreed to specialize, particularly in the purely artistic (where its contribution to I think the painting is the least doubt). Indeed, this difficulty to specialize in certain tasks, dramatically reducing what is left today of his work.
The spirit and work of Leonardo indeed radically opposed to the principle of division of labor and specialization originally put forward by Adam Smith and Ricardo, this principle is to increase opportunities for exchange One source of capitalist development and our material wealth.
Friedrich Engels had also noted that too, in the Dialectic Nature , speaking more generally of the great geniuses of the Renaissance:
"The heroes of That Time sept yet in thrall to The Division of Labor, The effects of restricting Which, With icts production of one-sidedness, weekends so Often In Their Successors record. "
This question is one that we all posed at one time or another. We usually some talents or interests outside the professional field, where most of the time, we do. Apart from any playfulness, our interest to exercise those talents for utility or otherwise to exercise fully the advantage comparison we have in a domain? The concept of opportunity cost is there to show us that, in fact, it is desirable that we exercise in the area where we have the greatest comparative advantage. So Leonardo would have to stick to painting and use the greatest engineers and architects of his time by delegating to complete the projects it was implementing in the areas where its comparative advantage was smaller than in painting . Any undergraduate student of economics knows and understands this.
Leonardo's case is obviously to be set apart as we speak probably the genius of geniuses, but what about people more "normal" like you and me? Can we stay long in the "error" - magnificent in the case of Leonardo, not to understand the benefits of specialization in an exchange?
The question is therefore whether economic agents spontaneously discover the virtues of specialization and exchange as they were developed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo. That's pretty much about the subject of the experiment performed by S. Crockett, V. Smith and Bart Wilson, whose results were published in the Economic Journal in 2009. I'll try to summarize the main results and give an intuition of experience which is actually quite complex.
In their experiment, participants have preferences exogenous consumption possibilities (there are two consumer goods) and characteristics in terms of production technology (they can produce both consumer goods). There are two types of subjects, subjects having a similar type of preferences and production technologies differ from those of the other group, all subjects belonging to the same virtual village. Subjects unfamiliar not the distribution of types or preferences / technologies from other subjects. By cons if they know their preferences, their allocation of time, they do not always know their production technology (depending on treatments). Basically, participants in each period of play, first a choice of production and consumption choices. They can remain in autarky, or try to make exchanges with other participants, knowing that one of interest of this experiment is precisely that they must discover themselves it is possible to exchange and thus have interest to specialize. In other words, the institutional framework implemented in the laboratory is very flexible and does not push them towards the exchange and specialization. Why not inform the subjects that can be exchanged? They remind quoting Adam Smith himself: "As It Is The Power of Exchanging Which Gives Used To The division of labor, so The extents of this division in proportion Will Always Be To The Extent of That Power .."
Clearly, the process of exchange and division of labor, the two reinforcing processes must be discovered and validated by officers during a learning process in which everyone finds their interest. To implement this process of discovery, during the experiment, subjects can therefore communicate in a completely free, so that each seeking its own interest ultimately lead the community to its maximum efficiency (gain obtained with specialization and exchange is three times the gain that can get involved in autarky).
An example of the type of communication performed by the subjects, just for fun:
source: Crockett, Smith and Wilson 2009, p.1183
Experimental treatments consist mainly of varying the number of participants within a group and the level of information about its own production technology.
As always the results raise questions: in all processing, there is at least a few participants who remain in autarky and that never discovered (or refuse to learn) the virtues of trade and specialization. There are also participants who discover their comparative advantage and immediately implement it. Moreover, when participants exchange, especially in large groups, exchanges are not bilateral but multilateral.
But back to our discussion of specialization. Knowing that the Pareto optimum corresponds to 100% of participants who engaged in the production of both goods in which each has a comparative advantage (which they must eventually discover they do not know their production technology) The number of specialists (the subjects that affect at least 90% of their time staffing the business with a comparative advantage) is a general belief in time, during periods of repetition (There are forty) but varies greatly among treatments. On average it is 50%, but tends to be significantly lower when group size is large and production technologies are initially unknown when the group size is small and the primary technologies known by the participants.
The moral of all this is that it is not obvious to participate in the exchange and specialization, although it seems consistent with his interest and that people know it. As noted ultimately Crockett et al, 2009, experience proves that the exchange is a phenomenon before social whole and which has even more likely to occur and consolidation that we are in bilateral relations. So if Leonardo did not specialize, it may be that the granting of trust sparingly to his contemporaries, and he certainly had a fairly negative view of human nature ...
