David Ricardo

This book offers a new account of David Ricardo's political economy that is both scholarly and accessible. It provides an up to date overview of the secondary literature on Ricardo, and discusses alternative perspectives on his work, including those of Marxians, neoclassicals and Sraffians. The book makes a critical assessment of the 'new views' of Ricardo's politics, his macroeconomics and his theory of wages, and links his writings to current controversies on fiscal and monetary policy, including 'Ricardian equivalence', fiscal austerity and the case for an independent central bank. Successive chapters deal with Ricardo's life and times; his vision, including his philosophical and political ideas; his theory of value and distribution; international trade and the case against protection; Ricardo's macroeconomics, focusing on Say's Law, money and banking, and structural unemployment; his approach to fiscal policy, monetary policy, the relief of poverty and classical liberalism; his editors and critics, 1823-2013; and the alternative interpretations of Ricardo's economics of Marx, Marshall and Sraffa. There is a comprehensive bibliography.