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As Kenneth Arrow has pointed out in a recent paper, "David Ricardo was a peaceful man" (Arrow 1991, p. 70). Indeed he was—during his lifetime. I am not so sure he is resting peacefully given the further assertion that his system was "a bold attempt to determine values independent of demand considerations" (ibid., p. 75). Arrow adds, byway of qualification, that he does "not think, as some neo-Ricardians seem to, that there was in any sense an intended repudiation of the demand schedule"; rather Ricardo did not conceive of such a schedule even though "some of [his] analysis can only be made sensible on the basis of such a concept."

In his Presidential address to the American Economic Association, Gary Becker alludes to Thomas Malthus's "great contribution" (1988, p. 1) in a prologue to a wider exploratory discussion of some of the implications for macroeconomics flowing from recent programs in family economics. The content of the contribution as represented here (p. 2) includes diminishing returns to increases in employment "when land and other capital are fixed;" population growth positively related to the wage, the lower population growth at low wages turning on reduced birth rates (the preventive check) and increased death rates (the positive check); and a long-run equilibrium wage at which population is constant at a level determined by the production function. Becker emphasizes the stability of the equilibrium wage in the face of disturbances. A catastrophic reduction in population size (eg. the Black Death) and consequently a wage increase will be followed by positive population growth which restores both the wage and population size to their respective equilibrium levels. In the event of increases in the amount of usuable land, population size will become permanently higher with the wage ultimately reduced to its original long-run level. Becker represents Malthus as reaching "much more pessimistic conclusions about the long-term economic prospects of the average family" than, for example, Godwin and Condorcet who had maintained that the economic position of mankind will continue to improve over time.

In several reviews of my Classical Economics (1987; henceforth CE) a criticism recurs relating to my proposition that distribution in Ricardian economics is dependent upon the pattern of final demand. Anthony Brewer, who is convinced by the demonstration in the book of 'a fundamentally important core of general equilibrium economics accounting for resource allocation in terms of the rationing function of relative prices,' has stated the objection fairly and his formulation invites and deserves a response:[Hollander] does overstate his case at times. For example, he claims that, in Ricardo's theory, changes in the pattern of demand should react on the demand for labour, and thus on wages, while admitting that 'Ricardo himself never formally made' this extension [CE, p. 104]. He later uses exactly this interaction of demand and wages to support his interpretation of Ricardo against Dobb [CE, p. 360]. Surely, the fact that Ricardo did not 'formally make' this point (i.e., did not make it at all) is an argument against Hollander's reading, not for it (1988, p. 555).

SUMMARYAccording to Malthusian growth theory the wage rate may be maintained constant on the path to the stationary state, at a level above 'subsistence' by appropriate reductions in the population growth rate. In this paper we document J. S. MILL'S version of the Malthusian model and various applications thereof.