David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy

David Ricardo (1772–1823) was trained from the age of 14  by his father, a Jewish stockbroker who had migrated from Amsterdam to London, in the intricacies of stockbrokeraging. Although Ricardo did not receive a formal university education, he developed a keen interest in mathematics, chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and, later in his life, political economy, which became his primary focus upon retirement. Ricardo amassed significant wealth through his stock market activities and, as Heilbroner (1981) notes, became “the richest of all the economists”. His early publications included The High Price of Bullion (1810) and, about five years later, An Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock, which contained his, still-controversial corn model. In the same year, he began writing a book on political economy, complet a draft of the first seven theoretical chapters in 1816.