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Intensive Rent and Value in Ricardo

CHRISTIAN BIDARD

Ricardo's statement that the marginal capital pays no rent is at the basis of his extension of the labour theory of value to the presence of lands. That statement has been recently criticised by Fratini in the case of intensive cultivation. We defend Ricardo’s position on that point. However, the reduction of a productive system with land to a single-product system is generally impossible, and for instance the trade-off property between wages and profits does not hold in general.