ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a historical analysis of how Ricardo's development of international trade theory has resounded through the years, up to recent times. Ricardo's law of comparative advantage is put in the context of pre-Ricardian theory, as well as the early post-Ricardian contributions of Senior, Montifort Longfield, and John Stuart Mill. David Ricardo's influence on international trade theory extends from almost the moment he formulated the law of comparative advantage to the present day. Absolute advantage as a determinant of trade flows was never a doctrine in the sense of a general outlook, such as the wages fund theory or the labor theory of value. A fundamental feature of multicommodity Ricardian theory is that in a free-trade and zero-transport-cost siutation the ratio of home to foreign wages must be no larger than the home country's largest productivity advantage and no smaller than the home country's smallest productivity advantage.
