Takuya Hatori, Early Period Ricardo’s Theories of Value and Distribution

English Translation Series: Japanese Historians of Economic Thought〈5〉

抄録

Introduction by Ken Mizuta and Shigeyoshi Senga The text of which this is a translation is Chapter 4 of Takuya Hatori （1922-2012）ʼs Kotenha Keizaigaku no Kihon Mondai （The Fundamental Question of Classical Economics）, Tokyo: Miraisha, 1972. It had originally been published as an article with the same Japanese title, but Hatori gave it the slightly different English title ʻRicardoʼs theory of value and distribution in his Essay on Profitsʼ in Fukushima Universityʼs Sho―gaku Ronsyu― （The Journal of Commerce, Eco-nomics and Economic History）, 34 （3）, 91-151, 1965, and then added some re-visions, in particular a ʻtotal rewriteʼ of Section 5, when it was included in the book cited above. Before the publication of the article just noted, Hatori had presented a report entitled ʻEarly Ricardoʼs theories on distributionʼ at the 29th Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for the History of Economic Thought held in September 1965 at the Otaru University of Commerce, and ac-cording to the postscript of the original article ʻin substance this included the content of this text up to Section 4.ʼ Hatori states that he wrote the article after having given his presentation and considered the criticisms it elicited. Hatori began his academic work in the field of Japanese economic history but later shifted his region of research to the broad range of economic thought, from figures such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the era of the civil revolution to classical economists in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Above all, he devoted his energies to study of British classical econo-mists like Adam Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus, and David Ricardo. Hatori particularly concentrated his efforts on the examination of Ricardoʼs economics.