David Ricardo
David Ricardo was born as the son of a Jewish Dutch merchant who shortly before son’s birth settled in England and worked as a stockbroker. David Ricardo never studied high school, he followed his father’s footsteps and joined his firm. From the age of fourteen he began to work on the exchange. In the age of 42 his wealth exceeded 1 million pounds and left the business and devote himself to politics. In 1807 he became one of the founders of “The English scientific community” that exists until today.
Most dealt with the cause of the devaluation of the British pound, which is described in the article “The High Cost of Gold” (1810). In 1817, he created a work Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. This work is Smith’s Wealth of Nations is considered one of the most important works of the history of economics. Since, in his book they were used only theoretical reasoning and examples, became known for this tendency to abstract theories without much evidence, the notion of Ricardian vice.
Ricardo advocated free, open market. He continued to Smith’s theory of absolute advantages and came up with the Theory of comparative advantage. Significant is his Labor theory of value and Law on falling rate of profit.
Ricardo created the classical political economy based on deductive abstract, use no empirical evidence, without recourse to history. He was the first economist who managed to work like that.
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