structural:reformatting, information:classification
Value theory

David Ricardo worked to fix the issues he felt were most concerning with Adam Smith ’s Labour Theory of Value. Both men worked with the assumption that land, labour, and capital were the three basic factors of production. However, Smith narrowed in on labour as the determinant of value. Ricardo believes that with production having three factors it is impossible for only one of them to determine value on its own. Ricardo illustrates his point by adapting Smith's deer beaver analogy to show that even when labour is the only factor of production the hardship and tools of the labour will drive a wedge in the relative value of the good. Due to his criticisms of the Labour Theory of Value George Stigler called his theory a "93% labor theory of value".

Ricardo's most famous work is his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817). He advanced a labour theory of value:

The value of a commodity, or the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange, depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not on the greater or less compensation which is paid for that labour.

Ricardo's note to Section VI:

Mr. Malthus appears to think that it is a part of my doctrine, that the cost and value of a thing be the same;—it is, if he means by cost, "cost of production" including profit.