On “effectual demand” and the “extent of the market” in Adam Smith and David Ricardo

Alex Thomas

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2021, vol. 28, issue 3, 305-323

Abstract: This paper revisits the question of demand in the works of Adam Smith and David Ricardo by adopting a novel approach: the joint examination of the concepts of “effectual demand” and the “extent of the market.” The discussion on “effectual demand” highlights its social nature and finds that in a multi-commodity framework, the vector of commodity supplies adapts to the vector of effectual demands. Subsequently, the “extent of the market” is seen to play a distinct role in determining economic growth as a demand-side determinant alongside the supply-side determinants of net saving and technological progress. The connections between the “extent of the market” and “effectual demand” are also explored in this paper. The findings point to a more important analytical role for demand in both Smith and Ricardo than has hitherto been highlighted.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09672567.2020.1817120 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:305-323

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REJH20

DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2020.1817120

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought is currently edited by José Luís Cardoso

More articles in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().