Ghislain Deleplace - Ricardo on Money: Ahead of His Time or Unorthodox?

Ricardo on Money

Despite his achievements, David Ricardos views on money have often been misunderstood and underappreciated. His advanced ideas had to wait until the twentieth century to be applied, and most historians of economic thought continue to consider him as an obsolete orthodox. The last book devoted in tribute to Ricardo as a monetary economist was published more than 25 years ago.

Ricardo on Money encompasses the whole of Ricardos writings on currency, whether in print, unpublished notes, correspondence, or reported parliamentary speeches and evidence. The aim of the book is at rehabilitating Ricardo as an unorthodox theorist on money and suggesting his relevance for modern analysis. It is divided into three parts: history, theory and policy. The first describes the factual and intellectual context of Ricardos monetary writings. The second part puts the concept of standard centre stage and clarifies how, according to Ricardo, the standard regulated the quantity and hence the value of money. The final part shows that Ricardo relied on the active management of paper money rather than on flows of bullion and commodities to produce international adjustment and guarantee the security of the monetary system.

Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the publication of On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, this book will be of great interest to all historians of economic thought and scholars of monetary economics.

Ghislain Deleplace is Emeritus Professor of Economics at University Paris 8 at Saint-Denis, France. His fields of research are the history of monetary thought (Steuart, Ricardo, Marx, Keynes, Sraffa), the history of the international monetary system (sixteenth century, nineteenth century), and the post-Keynesian theory of money.

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A Reappraisal

Ghislain Deleplace

Ricardo on Money

A Reappraisal

Ghislain Deleplace

First published 2017

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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2017 Ghislain Deleplace

The right of Ghislain Deleplace to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Deleplace, Ghislain, author.

Title: Ricardo on money : a reappraisal / Ghislain Deleplace.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016048743| ISBN 9780415661584 (hardback) ISBN 9781315207872 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Ricardo, David, 1772-1823. | Money. | Monetary policy.

Classification: LCC HB103.R5 D45 2017 | DDC 332.401--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016048743

ISBN: 978-0-415-66158-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-20787-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Brixham, UK

To the memory of Charles (19212012) and
Simonne (19212015) Deleplace
To Nathalie, Aurlien, Raphal

Ricardos Memorial in Hardenhuish churchyard

Contents

PART I
History

PART II
Theory

PART III
Policy

The numerous quotations from Ricardo are taken from The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, edited by Piero Sraffa with the collaboration of Maurice H. Dobb, and originally published in 11 volumes between 1951 and 1973 by Cambridge University Press for the Royal Economic Society. These texts are now published online by Liberty Fund, freely available for academic purposes.

Parts of various chapters of the book have been published in the entries Bullionist Controversy, Monetary Theory, and Papers on Money and Banking which I wrote for The Elgar Companion to David Ricardo, edited by Heinz D. Kurz and Neri Salvadori in 2015. I thank the editors and Edward Elgar Publishing for granting permission to reproduce these extracts.

Part of have been published in G. Deleplace, C. Depoortre and N. Rieucau (2013) An unpublished letter of David Ricardo on the double standard of money, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 20 (1), February: 128. I thank my co-authors, the editors of the journal, and Routledge for granting permission to reproduce this extract and the letter.

For 25 years I have passionately discussed with Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and Annalisa Rosselli about how Ricardo on money was different from what he was usually believed to be; this scientific complicity has been invaluable. For even longer Carlo Benetti and Jean Cartelier have been for me a source of inspiration by their unorthodox approach to money and I tried to convince them that Ricardo could unexpectedly have something to do with such an approach. They read and commented on of the book, and helped me to improve its presentation. My understanding of the historical background of Ricardos monetary writings has much benefited from a research on international bimetallism implemented during more than twenty years with Marie-Thrse Boyer-Xambeu and Lucien Gillard. Discussions with my co-authors on Ricardo, Nathalie Sigot for one article, Christophe Depoortre and Nicolas Rieucau for another, have contributed to the shaping of some of the propositions contained in this book.

I am grateful to those who commented on my presentations in conferences on Ricardo on money and finance organised by the University of Paris 8 at Saint-Denis (2006), the Ricardo Society of Japan in Kyoto (2012), SOAS, University of London (2016), and in other international conferences organised in Thessaloniki (2009), Istanbul (2011), Saint Petersburg (2012), Paris (2016) by the European Society for the History of Economic Thought, in London (2010) by the City University of London, and in Cambridge (2012) by Gonville and Caius College. I thank those who raised many interesting points on these occasions, particularly (in addition to those already mentioned) Christian Bidard, Sylvie Diatkine, Jan Kregel, Luigi L. Pasinetti, Ajit Sinha and Susumu Takenaga.