Who is David Ricardo?

David Ricardo (1772-1823)

The British political economist, David Ricardo, was born in London, England on April 18, 1772 as the third of 17 children in a family of Portuguese origin. When he was 21 years old, David married outside of his Jewish faith with a Quaker, Priscilla Anne Wilkinson, and his family disowned him as a result. David's father was a successful stockbroker and naturally David supported himself by making his own stockbroking business, using connections he made when he worked with his father. David became interested in Economics when, at the age of 27, he read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. At age 37, he wrote his first economics article, and spent his remaining 14 years as a professional economist.

David was one of the most influential of the classical economists. In addition to being an economist, David was also a member of Parliament, a businessman, and a speculator. In 1809, David wrote about the Bank of England's propensity to issue excess banknotes. On this, he wrote about England's inflation and was an early believer in monetarism. In 1815, David wrote about what came to be known as the law of diminishing marginal returns in his Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock. David also opposed the protectionist Corn Laws because they restricted imports of wheat. He was an advocate for free trade and formulated the idea of comparative costs which is known today as comparative advantage, the basis for free trade advocacy. David observed that gains will come if each country specialized in producing the good for which its comparative cost is lower. Ricardo was known for arriving at his complex conclusions without any of the mathematical tools deemed essential by modern economists. For example, David's theory of rents, that landowners and not tenants were the ones who profit from productive farmland, was arrived at without math. His theory of rents is still used today to explain such things as why agricultural price supports help owners of farmland rather than farmers, or why a restriction on the number of taxicabs benefits those who own taxi medallions and not necessarily all cab drivers.

I never knew who David Ricardo was before before being assigned this alias and I am surprised I learned so many of his concepts without knowing he was responsible for finding them. I am glad I was able to learn more about him through various informative websites. I learned a lot of his key concepts like the law of diminishing marginal returns, inflation, free trade, and comparative advantage, in intro to macro- and micro- economics. I think some of his findings could definitely fit with the economics of organizations since they helped set the foundation of contemporary economics. For example, the theory of rents in relation to factories leased to companies for production/manufacturing or law of diminishing marginal returns for analyzing worker output in the organization's working environment.


References
image: http://s23.postimage.org/nup3rm27v/David_Ricardo.jpg
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Ricardo.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo