September Book of the Month: “Ricardo’s Gauntlet”

“Ricardo’s Gauntlet” is a brilliant tour de force. Mainstream economists unanimously argue that the logic of comparative advantage and national specialization makes a rigid adherence to free trade the best policy for everyone, all the time, everywhere. Kishore devastates the argument. This is a powerful and timely contribution to the growing body of technically excellent alternatives to a stultifying orthodoxy.”

— Duncan Kennedy, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School

This month, we are excited to present one of our trade titles, Ricardo’s Gauntlet: Economic Fiction and the Flawed Case for Free Trade  as “Book of the Month”. The book’s publication comes at a time when the free trade debate continues to rage in the media. It advances a critique of the mainstream economic case for international free trade and argues that this case relies on a cluster of interconnected and mutually enforcing ‘economic fictions’ – economic theories or doctrines that pretend to be fact but which upon examination turn out to be mirages.

We also caught up with the book’s author, Viashaal Kishore, and asked him a few questions about his experience writing the book and his theories on free trade. You can read the interview here.