David Ricardo (British Economist & Politician) - in English

David Ricardo
The Greatest Economists


David Ricardo was a British political economist, politician, and member of the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland. He is recognized as one of the most influential classical economists.

Ricardo wrote his first economics article at age 37, advocating for a reduction in the note-issuing of the Bank of England. He was also an abolitionist and believed in the autonomy of a central bank as the issuer of money. Ricardo worked on fixing issues in Adam Smith's Labour Theory of Value, stating that the value of a commodity depends on the labor necessary for its production. He contributed to the development of theories of rent, wages, and profits, defining rent as the difference between the produce obtained by employing equal quantities of capital and labor. Ricardo's Theory of Profit posited that as real wages increase, real profits decrease due to the revenue split between profits and wages.

Ricardo’s interest in economic questions arose in 1799 when he read An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), by the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith. For 10 years he studied economics, somewhat offhandedly at first and then with greater concentration. His first published work was The High Price of Bullion, a Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes (1810), an outgrowth of letters Ricardo had published in the Morning Chronicle the year before. His book refueled the controversy then surrounding the Bank of England: freed from the necessity of cash payment (strains from the wars with France prompted the government to bar the Bank of England from paying its notes in gold), both the Bank of England and the rural banks had increased their note issues and the volume of their lending. The directors of the Bank of England maintained that the subsequent increase in prices and the depreciation of the pound had no relation to the increase in bank credit. Ricardo and others, however, asserted that there indeed was a link between the volume of bank notes and the level of prices. Furthermore, they argued that the price levels in turn affected foreign exchange rates and the inflow or outflow of gold.



Related Videos

1) Adam Smith
(Scottish Economist & Philosopher)

   • Adam Smith (Scottish Economist & Phil...  

2) David Ricardo
(British Economist & Politician)

   • David Ricardo (British Economist & Po...  

3) Amartya Kumar Sen
(Indian Economist & Philosopher)

   • Amartya Kumar Sen (Indian Economist &...  

4) Karl Marx
(The Father Of Scientific Socialism & Communism)

   • Karl Marx (The Father Of Scientific S...  

5) Francois Quesnay
(French Economist & Physician)

   • Francois Quesnay (French Economist & ...  

6) Thomas Robert Malthus
(English Economist)

   • Thomas Robert Malthus (English Econom...  

7) Paul Samuelson
(American Economist)

   • Paul Samuelson (American Economist) -...  

8) Robert Merton Solow
(American Economist)

   • Robert Merton Solow (American Economi...