Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-lvtdw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-15T06:07:15.283Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Smith's Legacy and the Definitions of the Natural Wage in Ricardo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Antonella Stirati
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There is an on-going controversy on the interpretation of David Ricardo's wage theory, which has undoubtedly been fueled by the existence of contradictions and difficulties in Ricardo's own treatment of wages. The aim of this paper is to clarify the sources of these difficulties, and to trace their possible historical and analytical reasons. To this end, Ricardo's contribution is put in historical context, and compared with the received doctrine of his time, that is, with Adam Smith's wage theory. This comparison shows that there are many Smithian elements in Ricardo, and that the problems emerge when Ricardo departs from Smith. These problems are essentially the coexistence of Smithian and Ricardian notions of the natural wage in Ricardo's work and the difficulties in reconciling the latter with the distinction drawn by Ricardo between natural and market variables. The reason.for Ricardo's partial departure from Smith, it will be argued, may have been his wish to render more clear-cut his conclusions concerning the tendency of the profit rate to fall in consequence of a rising price of corn. The effort to clarify the difficulties in Ricardo's theory and the comparison with Smith also entail an interpretation that differs in important respects from those found on both the main sides of the controversy over his wage theory.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Spring 1995 , pp. 106 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bharadwaj, K. 1987. “Wages in Classical Economics,” in Eatwell, Milgate, and Newman, 1987.Google Scholar
Blaug, M. 1985. Economic Theory in Retrospect, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Bowley, M. 1976. Studies in the History of Economic Theory Before 1870, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Cannan, E. 1893. A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution in English Political Economy from 1776 to 1848, Percival & Co, London.Google Scholar
Caravale, G., ed. 1985. The Legacy of Ricardo, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Caravale, G. 1985. “Diminishing Returns and Accumulation in Ricardo,” in Caravale, G., ed., The Legacy of Ricardo, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Casarosa, C. 1978. “A New Formulation of the Ricardian System,” Oxford Economic Papers, 30, pp. 38–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Vivo, G. 1987. Ricardo, in Eatwell, Milgate, and Newman, 1987.Google Scholar
EatwellJ., M. Milgate J., M. Milgate, and Newman, P., eds. 1987. The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Garegnani, P. 1984. “Value and Distribution in the Classical Economists and Marx,” Oxford Economic Papers, 36, 291–325.Google Scholar
Garegnani, P. 1990. “Sraffa: Classical versus Marginalist Analysis,” in Bharadwaj, K. and Schefold, B., eds., Essays on Piero Sraffa. Critical Perspectives on the Revival of Classical Theory, Unwin Hyman, London.Google Scholar
Hicks, J. and Hollander, S.. 1977. “Mr. Ricardo and the Moderns,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 99, no. 1, 351–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollander, S. 1973. The Economics of Adam Smith, Heineman, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollander, S. 1979. The Economics of David Ricardo, University Press, Toronto.Google Scholar
Hollander, S. 1983. “On the Interpretation of Ricardian Economics: The Assumption Regarding Wages,” American Economic Review, 73, no. 2, 314–18.Google Scholar
Hollander, S. 1990. “Ricardian Growth Theory: A Resolution of Some Problems in Textual Interpretation,” Oxford Economic Papers, 42, 730–50.Google Scholar
Kaldor, N. 1955–1956. “Alternative Theories of Distribution,” Review of Economic Studies, 23, 83–100.Google Scholar
Levy, D. 1976. “Ricardo and the Iron Law. A Correction of the Record,” History of Political Economy, 8, no. 2, 235–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, A. 1975. “Adam Smith's System of Equilibrium Growth,” in Skinner, A. S. and Wilson, E. T., eds., Essays on Adam Smith, Clarendon, Oxford.Google Scholar
Marshall, A. 1920. Principles of Economics, Macmillan, London, 1982.Google Scholar
Pasinetti, L. 1959–1960. “A Mathematical Formulation of the Ricardian System,” Review of Economic Studies, 27, 77–88.Google Scholar
Pasinetti, L. 1982. “A Comment on the New View of the Ricardian System,” in Baranzini, M., ed., Advances in Economic Theory, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Peach, T. 1987. “David Ricardo's Treatment of Wages,” in Black, R. D. C., ed., Ideas in Economics, Macmillan, London, 104–28.Google Scholar
Peach, T. 1988. “S. Hollander's Classical Economics: A Review Article,” The Manchester School, 56, no. 2, 167–76.Google Scholar
Peach, T. 1993. Interpreting Ricardo, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Picchio, A. 1981. “Il salario come prezzo naturale del lavoro nell'economia politica classica,” Ricerche Economiche, nos. 1/2, 85–114.Google Scholar
Picchio, A. 1992. The Political Economy of Social Reproduction of Labour: Analytical and Historical Aspects of Labour Supply, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Pivetti, M. 1987. “Distribution Theories: Classical,” in Eatwell, Milgate, and Newman, 1987.Google Scholar
Ricardo, David. 1951–73. Works and Correspondence, edited by Sraffa, P. with the collaboration of Dobb, M., 11 vols., Cambridge University Press for the Royal Economic Society, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Roncaglia, A. 1982. “Hollander's Ricardo,” Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics, Spring, 373–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosselli, A. 1985. “The Theory of the Natural Wage” in Caravale 1985.Google Scholar
Samuelson, P. A. 1978. “The Canonical Classical Model of Political Economy,” Journal of Economic Literature, 16, December, 1415–35.Google Scholar
Skinner, A. S. 1979. “A Conceptual System,” in A System of Social Science. Papers relating to Adam Smith, Clarendon, Oxford.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1976. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by Campbell, R. N., Skinner, A. S., and Todd, W. B., The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
St. Clair, O. 1965. A Key to Ricardo, Augustus M. Kelley, New York.Google Scholar
Stigler, G. J. 1952. “The Ricardian Theory of Value and Distribution,” Journal of Political Economy, 60, 187–207.Google Scholar
Stigler, G. J. 1990. “Ricardo or Hollander?,” Oxford Economic Papers, 42, 765–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stirati, A. 1992. “Institutions, Unemployment and the Living Standard in the Classical Theory of Wages,” Contributions to Political Economy, 11, 41–66.Google Scholar
Stirati, A. 1994a. The Theory of Wages in Classical Economics: A Study of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Their Contemporaries, Edward Elgar, Aldershot.Google Scholar
Stirati, A. 1994b. “Ricardo and the Wages Fund,” Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia Politica, no. 162, Università di Siena.Google Scholar
Torrens, R. 1815. An Essay on the External Corn Trade, J. Nourse, London.Google Scholar