David Ricardo’s An Essay on the Effects of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock

Giancarlo de Vivo

History of Economics Review, 2015, vol. 62, issue 1, 76-97

Abstract: This paper is concerned with Ricardo’s 1815 Essay on Profits, putting the ideas thereby formulated into the context of the heated debates of 1814-15 about the Corn Bill, which was to be passed by the British Parliament in March 1815. The arguments of the protectionists and the free traders are briefly considered, and it is argued that Ricardo’s position had a much firmer (and original) basis than the positions until then put forward by both sides of the debate. Indeed, the paper argues that Ricardo’s Essay moved the debate onto a completely different, higher, analytical plane. Although the pamphlet contained virtually nothing of the elements of the general theory of international trade which Ricardo himself was to give to the world in his Principles two years later, the arguments in favour of free trade made in the Essay were nonetheless of much greater analytical quality than any which had been developed up to that time.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/18386318.2015.11681282 (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:rherxx:v:62:y:2015:i:1:p:76-97

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rher20

DOI: 10.1080/18386318.2015.11681282

Access Statistics for this article

History of Economics Review is currently edited by John Harry Bloch and John Hawkins

More articles in History of Economics Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().