>"classical economics describes the behavior of rational actors with perfect and symmetric information." Where does it describe the problems this way? Smith's

>"classical economics describes the behavior of rational actors with perfect and symmetric information." Where does it describe the problems this way? Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" is not a theoretical exercise in a moral and emotional vacuum, but an explanation of how development and prosperity come to be in the real world.[1] There are some examples laid out by classical economists which make the assumptions that you describe, but those assumptions were not key tenets of the classical school. Men like Ricardo and Bastiat spent their time addressing the real world, with all its corn laws, broken windows, and import tariffs; instead of the physicist's "friction-less vacuum". [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations