Abstract
We argue that it is rather unusual in economics that a theory, after 200 years, is still relevant and so important. We contribute this to the brilliance of the Ricardian idea and its simplicity. We show that the Ricardian trade theory was always present in the field of international trade, but even experienced an increase in its importance in the last 50 years. We then briefly describe how we celebrated the Ricardian Year 2017. The scientific conference on May 12, 2017 was the highlight. It is the pillar of this book. The chapter ends with a short presentation of the idea and structure of the book.
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Notes
- 1.
Rybczynski (1955).
- 2.
See also the “World Transformation Schedule” used in Caves, Frankel and Jones (2007, p. 63).
- 3.
Note that a Li (a Li *) captures the amount of labour per unit of output in industry i in the home (foreign) country.
- 4.
The series of events has been designed and organized by Rolf Weder and Thomas Gerber who is a PhD student in economics at the University of Basel. Till Schmidlin (research assistant) made all the posters and flyers. The idea of calling the individual events “Prelude”, “Act I–IV” and “Epilogue” may have been influenced by Rolf’s reading of Samuelson’s (2004) paper.
- 5.
Sraffa (2005), Vol. IV, p. 314.
- 6.
Sraffa (2005), Vol. VI, pp. 315–316.
- 7.
This is the time when John Murray Publishers also published Jane Austen’s last works “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey” (December 1817) and when the Waterloo Bridge was opened (June 1817).
- 8.
See, for example, the fragmentation approach by Jones and Kierzkowski presented in Jones (2000).
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Jones, R.W., Weder, R. (2017). Introduction: Celebrating 200 Years of Ricardian Trade Theory. In: Jones, R., Weder, R. (eds) 200 Years of Ricardian Trade Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60606-4_1
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