Yukizawa’s interpretation of Ricardo’s ‘theory of comparative costs’

An epoch-making insight into David Ricardo's discovery of the law of comparative advantage appeared in 2002: the 'Sraffa–Ruffin interpretation', as named by Andrea Maneschi. This chapter provides a brief survey of this new interpretation and introduces the interpretation of Kenzo Yukizawa, a Japanese Marxian theorist of international economics who anticipated the later interpretation in many ways. It then considers the significance of the Ruffin and Yukizawa interpretations. It was Yukizawa who, as early as the 1970s, criticized the standard interpretation as a 'deformed interpretation' derived from John Stuart Mill and insisted that Ricardo's theory of comparative costs should be understood 'as it was', in the same way as in Ricardo's original logic. In short, most Japanese Marxian theorists in international economics pursued a theory of comparative advantage based on the labour theory of value.