What achievements did David Ricardo have in economics?

"Principles of Political Economy and Taxation" uses a refined theoretical structure, language and examples close to reality to comprehensively discuss the operating mechanism of the capitalist production mode of the era in which he lived, making him a British classic A master of political economics and the greatest economist of the early 19th century.

From 1809 to 1815, he published a series of papers in the field of economics to explore monetary issues, thus becoming an authoritative monetary theorist. In February 1815, he published "On the Impact of Low Corn Prices on Capital Profits", which initially elaborated on the issues of land rent, profits, and wages, and advocated free trade and the abolition of the Corn Laws. This view represented the interests and demands of the rising British industrial bourgeoisie.

Ricardo published the book "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation" in 1817, which concentrated on his economic theory. In terms of value theory, he inherited Smith's distinction between use value and exchange value, but criticized Smith's argument that some commodities have exchange value without use value, and believed that any commodity without utility would not have exchange value.

On the issue of determining the amount of value, he criticized Smith’s view that value is determined by labor consumption and purchased labor. He correctly pointed out that the two are not equal. Purchased labor cannot determine value, but only by purchasing labor. The consumption of labor determines the value, and the value of a commodity is directly proportional to the amount of labor consumed to produce the commodity.

The book also criticizes Smith's erroneous view that value is determined by wages, profits, and land rent, and correctly points out that value also includes the labor expended in making tools. This is a new contribution of Ricardian value theory. From then on, he became a theoretical authority on political economics and gradually formed the "Ricardo School".

In 1810, Ricardo was elected as a member of Congress. He advocated electoral reform, freedom of speech, association and assembly, and opposed the anti-democratic decree of 1819.

Ricardo dedicated a special chapter in "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation" to focus on international trade issues and put forward the famous comparative advantage trade theory.

Extended information

David Ricardo inherited and developed the labor value theory founded by Adam Smith, and used it as the theoretical basis for establishing the theory of comparative advantage.

In analyzing and discussing the theory of comparative advantage, Ricardo gave labor an important position. He pointed out clearly at the beginning of "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation" that "the value of a commodity may be said to be related to The quantity of any other commodity exchanged depends on the relative amount of labor necessary to produce it.”

Further, like Smith, he distinguished value into “use value” and “exchange value.” "Value", pointed out that "usefulness is not a criterion for measuring exchange value", and believed that "the exchange value of commodities and the rules that determine the exchange value of commodities, that is, the rules that determine how much one must pay in exchange for other commodities, completely depend on these The relative amount of labor expended on a commodity.”

Reference material Baidu Encyclopedia - Ricardo