Rethinking the Market » Activities and Outputs (tag [David Ricardo])

Ricardo research cited in Financial Times article

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 10:43:00 GMT

On March 5th 2025, my research on David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage was cited in a Financial Times article assessing the current inadequacy of the response to Trump's threatened global tariff regime. The article is written by Nat Dyer, and it is called 'What economists get wrong about tariff wars: The history of global trade challenges Ricardo's enduring economic theory'. Nat's argument is that, wrongheaded though Trump's obsession with tariffs might be, the answer does not lie in citing an unhistoricised account of Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage back at him. He has been able to tap into broader societal perceptions that trade is not the global level playing field that the theory suggests, and he has appropriated that discontent into a self-serving critique of so-called globalist elites. It is impossible to oppose the Trump agenda, Nat concludes, if Ricardo's abstract theory is used solely to endorse the position that Trump accuses the globalist elites of adopting. He very generously credits me with showing how the debate about that theory can be properly historicised to point to the oppressive social relations of production that Ricardo hid from view in his supposedly universal models of the benefits of free trade.

Paper presented to the inaugural joint PAIS/Balsillie Joint Seminar Series in Political Economy

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 18:55:00 GMT

On October 19th 2022 I presented a paper to the joint seminar series organised by the Waterloo Political Economy Group on behalf of the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the PAIS IPE Cluster on behalf of Warwick's Department of Politics and International Studies. The other presenters at the themed session, 'International Development in the Longue Durée', were Eric Helleiner from the University of Waterloo and Kate Weaver from the University of Texas at Austin. My paper was entitled, 'Ricardo's Free Market Models and the Pre-History of Development Economics'.

Abstract: My paper speaks to a time in the history of economic thought before economists wrote about development explicitly, but when the whole of their subject field was animated by concerns that relate very much to the modern idea of development. The concept in use in the early nineteenth century tended to be ‘improvement’ rather than ‘development’, and even then it typically had two meanings. One was a generic sense of the word, linked to poverty alleviation and improving the living conditions of the population. The other was much more specific, akin to commercialisation, especially of land, and focused primarily on the technical issue of how to use the private property rights enjoyed by landowners to try to increase the yields associated with agricultural production for the good of wider society. The content of my paper focuses more obviously on the latter of these two meanings. It is written specifically on David Ricardo and the political conditions under which he wrote his Principles of Political Economy in the 1810s. Ricardo is not conventionally seen as a development theorist, and it is certainly the case that he takes his place in the canon of economics for altogether different reasons. However, the Principles was definitely all about improvement in the latter, more technical sense; moreover, it was written at a time when it was politically risky to challenge the feudalist assumption still in circulation in Britain that a threat to the landowning interest was a threat to the social structure of authority as a whole. I argue in the paper that Ricardo consequently retreated into a mode of expression based on free market models, so that he could contract out his political opinions to the abstract entity of ‘the science of political economy’, rather than having to personalise his critique of government policy at the time. This had an important effect on how economic theory developed, as successive generations of economists appear to have been enamoured by Ricardo’s methodology of arguing through free market models, even if they quickly forgot why he had opted for that methodology in the first place. I am sure that it is not too much of a stretch to say that this has also been important for the way in which development theory has evolved historically, particularly how that theory has been put to use by development institutions. Free market models have played a crucial role in development practice, even though no discussion is ever had about the particular political conditions in which free market models first came to prominence in economics.

Paper presented to the Political Economy Research Group, University of Cambridge

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 20:36:31 GMT

On January 26th 2022 I presented a paper called 'Seeking Refuge in Mathematised Free Market Models? The Febrile Political Backdrop to Ricardo's Principles' to the Political Economy Research Group of the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Abstract: 'Out of all possible institutional arrangements for organising economic life, how did orthodox economic theory come to reflect in its models only free market institutions to the exclusion of all others? Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy usually takes centre stage in historical scholarship that seeks to answer this question. However, almost no attention has thus far been paid to the broader background conditions that shaped the way in which he presented his text. Further exploration of these conditions makes it possible to ask whether orthodox economic theory’s continued conflation of ‘the economy’ and ‘the market’ results from treating as if they were universal what were actually only the specific features of a strictly limited period of early nineteenth-century British political history. Ricardo wrote the Principles during a time of severe curtailment of civil liberties in the realm of free speech. This culminated in the introduction of the so-called Six Acts, legislative instruments that made criticism of the King and his ministers into an offence with serious consequences. They were backed by suspensions of habeas corpus that allowed religious dissenters and political radicals to be imprisoned without trial. Ricardo was shielded by parliamentary privilege when speaking out in the House of Commons against the broader political climate that had produced this legislation, but not when committing his economic theory to the page. I ask whether he sought refuge from such pressures in abstract models that were at one stage removed from an expressly articulated opinion, models that imposed a rigid separation between ‘state’ and ‘market’. He thus might be seen to have circumvented what proved to be time-limited sedition laws through escape into a free-floating realm called ‘the market’, but that realm has persisted in orthodox economic theory long after the original need for it was exhausted.'

Paper delivered to the Virtual Paris Workshop on Reading Economics as Political Theory

Sat, 25 Sep 2021 10:52:14 GMT

On September 24th 2021 I presented a paper called 'The Political Context for Ricardo's Free Market Models' at the virtual Paris workshop on Reading Economics as Political Theory. The workshop was organised by Sam Knafo, Oliver Kessler and Matthias Thiemann.

Abstract: When attention turns to the need to read economics as political theory, one question tends to dominate. Out of all possible institutional arrangements for organising economic life, how did orthodox economic theory come to reflect in its models only free market institutions to the exclusion of all others? The search for the origins of this way of thinking usually alights on Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy. However, precious little scholarship has thus far been conducted on the broader background conditions that shaped the way in which Ricardo presented his text. Further exploration of these conditions makes it possible to ask whether orthodox economic theory’s continued conflation of ‘the economy’ and ‘the market’ results from treating as if they were universal what were actually only the specific features of a strictly limited period of early nineteenth-century British political history. Ricardo wrote the Principles during the time at which civil liberties in the realm of free speech were severely curtailed in Britain by repeated repressive legislation that culminated in the so-called Six Acts. These acts made criticism of the King and his ministers into an offence with serious consequences, not least because they were backed by suspensions of habeas corpus that allowed religious dissenters and political radicals to be imprisoned without trial. Ricardo was shielded by parliamentary privilege when speaking out in the House of Commons against the broader political climate that had produced this legislation, but not when committing his economic theory to the page. I ask in this paper whether he sought refuge from such pressures in abstract models that were at one stage removed from an expressly articulated opinion, models that imposed a rigid separation between ‘state’ and ‘market’. He thus might be seen to have circumvented what proved to be time-limited sedition laws through escape into a free-floating realm called ‘the market’, but that realm has persisted in orthodox economic theory long after the original need for it was exhausted.

'In Our Time' Episode on David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy, BBC Radio 4

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 09:26:00 GMT

On March 25th 2021 I appeared on an episode of Melvyn Bragg's BBC Radio 4 show, 'In Our Time'. The episode was on David Ricardo, and it explored his distrust of the landlord class and his use of free trade models as an economic counterpoise to the landlords' political control of parliament. I was invited onto the show in particular to show how Ricardo's economics can be read politically. My fellow panellists were Professor Richard Whatmore from the University of St Andrews and Dr Helen Paul from the University of Southampton.