Interpreting Ricardo

David Ricardo was the leading political economist of the early nineteenth century, and his ideas have been controversial and influential ever since. This book sets out to reconstruct the detailed substance and evolution of Ricardo's thought on the central topics of value, distribution and accumulation, and to summarize and evaluate the debates that continue to rage over the interpretation of his writings. It differs from other books on the subject by presenting Ricardo's work in its own terms, not those imported from a later theoretical discourse.

"This is a work of mature and balanced scholarship, a worthy addition to what Mark Blaug has referred to as the Ricardo interpretation industry. Scholars of classical economics and of the various Ricardian controversies will certainly want to read the more general chapters, and if they have a taste for close, careful textual exegesis, the others as well. Peach's mastery of the relevant literature on Ricardo, and his non-rancorous way of dealing with points of view he opposes, gives his conclusions real cogency." Geoffrey Gilbert, History of Political Economy