Interpreting Ricardo

About this book

"This book proposes a reconstruction of the substance and evolution of David Ricardo's thought on the interrelated topics of value, distribution and accumulation. It also contains a summary of, and critical commentary on, the existing secondary literature." "Among the topics developed in this book, the author rejects Piero Sraffa's 'corn model' interpretation of Ricardo's early writings, and questions many of the alleged similarities between the work of Ricardo and Sraffa. He reaffirms the 'old' interpretation that Ricardo's primary concern was to demonstrate the link between worsening conditions of production in agriculture and 'permanent' movements in profitability, and he opposes the Hollander and Hicks view of Ricardo's treatment of wages (the so-called 'new view' interpretation). Also, in the context of a detailed study of Ricardo's engagement with the labour theory of value, he rejects the fashionable view that Ricardo's version of the theory was merely 'empirical', and he argues that Marx's interpretation of Ricardo was considerably less flawed than some writers, including Marshall, Stigler and Steedman, have maintained. The author also rejects various 'neoclassical' interpretations of Ricardo's writings." "Dr Peach argues that Ricardo's work has been persistently misinterpreted and that this state of affairs can be remedied only by an attempt to understand Ricardo's writings in Ricardo's terms rather than those of later economic theorists."--Jacket.