Reviews for Ricardo's economics

The average rating for Ricardo's economics based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-10-29 00:00:00 Gladstone Peters After Adam smith, one name that has changed the concept of the market economy is undoubtedly David Ricard. It's hard to believe that he was not introduced to economics even he was thirty years old. His book political economy and taxation ahs change the discourse of many theories of economics ad paved the way for further analysis in this field. He laid the foundation of public finance and the market economy in his book.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-10-10 00:00:00 Sean Farrar In an age where undergraduates around the world are forced, cajoled and encouraged to take a course in Keynesian economics (as presented by some vulgarizer most notably Paul Samuelson) the brilliant writing of David Ricardo is virtually unknown to the general reading public. There are two good reasons for reading Ricardo. First he proposed several important theses that were used by later economists such as Marx (in this case the labour theory of value) and Keynes (in this case the law of diminishing marginal returns from increasing production.) The second reason, for reading Ricardo is that by doing so one gains insight in the theoretical framework used by politicians most notably in England to manage and stimulate the economy. Students who major in economics are discouraged from reading pre-Keynesian economists (known as classical economists) primarily because they provide no assistance in understanding how to manage an economy in the normative Keynes manner. The second reason may be subconscious. Economists (who today are all Keynesians) prefer to think that Economics is a science which it is not. Keynesian economics is a mathematical game or a model that can be used to effectively manage the normal economic cycle if properly applied by governments. The danger of studying classical economics is that it highlights the fact that Keynesian economics was simply a stage in a long intellectual process aimed at understanding our economy and not a science built on immutable truths. I think that anyone who has studied economics should at some time delve into the classics. Doing so will not undo your understanding of Keynes. It may however prepare you for the time when some new genius appears to take us to the next stage of understanding beyond Keynes. For the moment however we are all still Keynesians. The fact that the Marxist model of a command economy has been thoroughly discredited does not mean that there will never be a new revolution in economic thinking. Read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and then read Ricardo's "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation."