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FIXED CAPITAL IN AGRICULTURE: RICHARD JONES’S CRITIQUE OF RICARDO’S THEORY OF RENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2015

Christian Gehrke
Christian Gehrke*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Graz and Graz Schumpeter Centre, Resowi-Centre F 4, A 8010 Graz, Austria. Email: christian.gehrke@uni-graz.at.
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Abstract

Richard Jones’s 1831 critique of David Ricardo’s theory of rent is generally viewed as ill-founded. The present paper shows that Jones’s Essay on the Distribution of Wealth contains an important analytical insight: Jones noticed that Ricardo’s treatment of agricultural improvements was seriously incomplete, because it failed to accommodate the historically important case of agricultural improvements that involve the use of fixed capital. More generally, it is suggested that Jones was correct in pointing out that Ricardo had not properly taken into account fixed capital in his analysis of rent and of agricultural improvements.

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Articles
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Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 411 - 430
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2015 

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