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David Ricardo, b. Apr. 19, 1772, d. Sept. 11, 1823, was a leader of the British classical school of economists. He systemized the economic theory of his day and strongly influenced its subsequent development. Like Adam Smith before him, Ricardo believed in limiting state intervention in economic life. His early publication An Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock (1815) argued against high tariffs on grain imports, and his theory of comparative advantage showed how the unimpeded flow of commodities among nations could be of mutual benefit to all parties (see free trade).

The Ricardian world, however, was not particularly harmonious, nor was its outlook very optimistic. Ricardo shared the population doctrine of his friend Thomas Robert Malthus and believed that population pressure would tend to keep wages near the subsistence level. Further, he saw the future progress of society as marked by conflicts among economic classes. His theory of rent held that, as population growth caused the cultivation of new acreage, landowners' incomes would rise. This rise would intensify the squeeze on the incomes of capitalists (profits) and laborers (wages) and would ultimately bring further progress to a halt. In trying to prove this theory in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), he argued that commodities, with some exceptions, exchange in proportion to the labor embodied in their production. This "labor theory of value," though rejected by later Western economists, had great impact on the thinking of Karl Marx and his followers.

Noted for his theoretical rigor, Ricardo actually was a practicing economist only briefly. He came to it late from a business career and died at the age of 51, a scant 13 years after his first publication. He was very successful on the stock exchange and, in the last years of his life, served in Parliament.