If David Ricardo had lived beyond the age of 51, how might he have delivered a lecture on comparative advantage? I argue that Ricardo infers the direction of comparative advantage and the size of the ...

David Ricardo, a Scottish economist, made a perceptive observation that a few individuals, firms, or countries can gain from trading, even if one of them is objectively the best in all activities.

Economists sometimes present their discipline as the queen of the social sciences, a claim staked primarily on a superificial resemblance to physics: It has universal laws! Expressed in numbers! But ...