David Ricardo

David Ricardo was born in London in 1772, the third child of a Sephardic Jewish family that had come from the Netherlands. At fourteen he joined his father's business on the London Stock Exchange. At twenty-one he married Priscilla Anne Wilkinson, a Quaker, which led to a break with his parents; he later became a Unitarian. Working on his own account, he became one of the richest men in England, partly through government loans during the Napoleonic Wars. Reading Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in 1799 drew him to economics. His pamphlets on paper money (1810) and on the corn laws (1815) led to his major work, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), which set out the theory of comparative advantage. He retired to Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, sat in Parliament from 1819 and was a close friend and critic of Thomas Malthus. He died in 1823, aged fifty-one.

David Ricardo is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Born into a Sephardic Jewish family; by 21 he had broken with his father over religion, become a Unitarian and married a Quaker. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica

See also: Adam Smith · John Stuart Mill