Troy Segal is an editor and writer. She has 20+ years of experience covering personal finance, wealth management, and business news. Absolute and comparative advantage are economic concepts that help ...

Frank A. Wolak is a professor of economics and director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University. Updated January 19, 2011, 11:01 PM A basic economic theory of ...

David Ricardo, a Scottish economist, made a perceptive observation that a few individuals, firms, or countries can gain from trading, even if one of them is objectively the best in all activities.

In the early 19th century David Ricardo formulated the principle of comparative advantage to explain mutual gains from trade among countries. He based it on a critical assumption: that capital did not ...

David Ricardo published "On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation" on April 19 1817. This is the work that described the principle of comparative advantage and thus explained to us all why ...