Archive

GUIDO MONTANI

From an economic standpoint, the globalisation process amounts to the formation of an integrated market on a world-wide scale. The aim of this paper is to show that the Ricardian theory of international trade, if correctly interpreted, can explain why an early form of global market emerged in the 19th century, and why the current process has some distinctive characteristics. To this end, the Ricardian approach will be interpreted in the light of the stages of development theory, which Ricardo was not thinking of while writing the chapter On foreign trade of the Principles, but which is an important cultural legacy of classical economic thought.