The Early Life of David Ricardo

Abstract

David Ricardo was not the first political economist. But he was perhaps the first economist of the modern era. Where those who came before him, most notably Adam Smith (June 16, 1723–July 17, 1790), provided wonderful rhetoric with great flourishes of their pen, Ricardo was the first to convert intuition to a language that was amenable to mathematics and graphs. He also produced concepts that are still taught today — in almost precisely the same form as he had employed in his original presentations. While many have since attributed his ideas to other Great Minds such as Paul Samuelson (May 15, 1915-December 13, 2009), we can see so many roots of modern economics and public finance from his writings almost two centuries ago.