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Misinterpreting Ricardo: A Review Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Gary Mongiovi
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Extract

Debate over the interpretation of David Ricardo's economics has assumed special relevance since the publication of Piero Sraffa's Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (1960). Sraffa sought to revive and reconstruct a nearly lost classical tradition whose main elements, he believed, had been given their first coherent expression by Ricardo (Sraffa 1951, Garegnani 1984). On this interpretation, Ricardo's analysis, far from being a fumbling step toward the modern theory of supply and demand, as Marshall (1920) would have it, or a misguided detour as Jevons believed (1879), instead constitutes a logically consistent alternative to the marginalist theory that emerged after 1870.

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Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , Fall 1994 , pp. 248 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

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