Hollander’s Ricardo

Abstract

Samuel Hollander's impressive book The Economics of David Ricardo (1979a) is culmination of many papers (1971, 1973b, 1975, 1977a, 1977b, 1977c, 1979b, Hicks and Hollander, 1977). It is also a sequel to his book on Adam Smith (1973). It is intended to be the definitive work for decades (according to publisher's description) and part of a far-reaching reconstruction of history of economic thought. Hollander's Ricardo stresses interdependence of distributive and pricing problems, and market as an allocative mechanism. Ricardo emerges as fully integrated in tradition of general equilibrium theorists, descending from Adam Smith to neoclassical writers. This assessment challenges view of Sraffa (and current neo-Ricardian or Cambridge tradition) in his edition of Ricardo's Works and Correspondence (1951 and seq.) and restores previous judgment of Alfred Marshall (1961, appendix I). On this basis history of economic thought would appear as a continuous homogeneous line, centered on market as an allocative mechanism and revolving around supply-and-demand equilibrium and general interdependence. Hollander's views dispute, therefore, any clear-cut distinction (methodological, conceptual, and analytical) between classical political economy and neoclassical marginalist economics. For Hollander, if dividing lines are introduced, they should separate