V.—: International Values (p. 606)

The Ricardian doctrine, followed and carried further by Mill, has hitherto remained the almost exclusive possession of English economists. It has been expounded by Cairnes, Leading Principles, part iii. ch. 3, and by Bastable, Theory of International Trade (2nd ed. 1897). It has been objected to from two diametrically opposite points of view. Transferability of capital and labour, it has been argued, is true of international trade as well as of domestic, so that no separate theory is necessary for the determination of international values; e.g. Hobson, International Trade (1904). On the other hand it has been asserted that such a transferability is true neither of domestic nor of international trade, and that therefore it is necessary to reject both the Ricardian doctrine of home values and the Ricardian doctrine of international values; e.g. Cliffe Leslie, Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy (1879), Preface. A different theory has been put forward by Sidgwick, Principles, bk. ii. ch. 3. A mathematical treatment of the whole subject, with a criticism of all the leading writers, will be found in a series of articles by Edgeworth on The Theory of International Values in the Economic Journal, vol. iv. (1894). Bastable and Edgeworth, while admiring and accepting Mill's first statement of the theory (ch. 18, §§ 1–5), agree in regarding “the superstructure of later date” (§§ 6–8) as “laborious and confusing.”