The paper proposes a rational reconstruction of the arguments developed by Malthus and Ricardo in their 1815 essays, Grounds of an Opinion and An Essay on Profits, to repudiate and endorse a policy of free corn trade, respectively. Malthus envisaged defence and opulence as two mutually...

This is an entry produced for the Handbook of the History of Economic Analysis, edited by Gilbert Faccarello and Heinz D. Kurz (eds). Volume 3. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, forthcoming. We analyze competition as rivarly in a race, as a specific market structure, and as...

The paper analyzes Adam Smith’s views on monopoly focusing on Book IV and V of The Wealth of Nations and argues that Smith has left his analysis of monopoly in an embryonic form while the majority of scholars have assessed it starting from premises different from those, actually though...