David ricardo (1772—1823)

Classical Champion of Free Trade

David Ricardo is one of history's most influential economists.

Born in England, Ricardo made a fortune on the London Stock Exchange. This wealth gave him the time to write and to serve in Parliament's House of Commons. His most famous work, Principles of Polit­ical Economy and Taxation (1817), marked him as the greatest spokesman for classical economics since Adam Smith. ^[

Ricardo is especially famous in international eco­nomics for demonstrating the advantages of free trade. Free trade is a policy in which tariffs and other bar­riers to trade between nations are removed. To prove his point, Ricardo developed a concept we now call the principle of comparative advantage. Comparative ad­vantage enabled him to demonstrate that one nation might profitably import goods from another even though the importing country could produce that item for less than the exporter.

Ricardo's explanation of comparative advantage went as follows:

Portugal and England, both of whom produce wine and cloth, are considering the advantages of exchang­ing those products with one another.

Let's assume that:

• x barrels of wine are equal to (and therefore trade evenly for) y yards of cloth.

• In Portugal 80 workers can produce x barrels of wine in a year. It takes 120 English workers to produce that many barrels.

• 90 Portuguese workers can produce y yards of cloth in a year. It takes 100 English workers to produce y yards of cloth.

We can see, Ricardo continued, that even though Portugal can produce both wine and cloth more effi­ciently than England, it pays them to specialize in the production of wine and import English cloth. This is so because by trading with England, Portugal can ob­tain as much cloth for 80 worker-years as it would take 90 worker-years to produce themselves.

England will also benefit. By specializing in cloth, it will be able to obtain wine in exchange for 100 worker-years of labor rather than 120.

As a member of Parliament, Ricardo pressed the government to abandon its traditional policy of pro­tection. Though he did not live to-achieve that goal, his efforts bore fruit in the 1840s when England be­came the first industrial power to adopt a policy of free trade. There followed 70 years of eсonomic growth during which the nation became the world's wealthi­est industrial power.

Требования к зачету для студентов 1-го курса Аудирование.

Студент должен уметь:

• распознать звуки в отдельных словах,

• ударение в словах, ударные и неударные слова в потоке речи (ритм речи),

• паузы (деление речевого потока на смысловые отрезки), понимать смысл основных частей диалога или монолога.

Говорение.

Студент должен уметь:

• Артикулировать звуки изучаемого иностранного языка,

• Знать систему гласных и согласных звуков языка,

• Выделять ударные и неударные слова в потоке речи,

• Делить речевой поток на смысловые группы,

• Владеть основными особенностями полного стиля произношения, характерными и для сферы профессиональной коммуникации,

• Знать нейтральную интонацию речи изучаемого языка.

Чтение.

Студент должен уметь:

• определить основное содержание прагматических текстов по знакомым опорным словам, интернациональной лексике, географическим названиям и т.п.;

• распознавать значение слов по контексту;

• определять принадлежность слова к той или иной части речи по порядку слов в предложении и морфологии;

• выделить главную и второстепенную информацию;

• воспринимать смысловую структуру текста.