David Ricardo indicated in his famous numerical example in the Principles that it would be advantageous to Portugal to import English cloth made by 100 men, although it could have been produced locally with the labor of only 90 Portuguese men. As the production of the cloth required less quantity of labor in Portugal, it has been commonly inferred that this country had a production cost advantage over England in cloth making. This inference will be proven wrong here by showing that the English cloth had a lower cost of production than the Portuguese cloth. This finding refutes the widespread belief that Ricardo had formulated a new law, principle, or rule for international specialization, known as “comparative advantage.” He used the same rule for specialization as Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations. Thus, the popular contraposition of Smith’s absolute versus Ricardo’s comparative cost advantage has to be dismissed.

中文翻译：

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克服绝对和比较优势：作为国际贸易基础的外国商品相对便宜的再评价

大卫李嘉图在他著名的数值例子中指出原则葡萄牙进口 100 人制作的英国布料对葡萄牙有利，尽管它本可以在当地仅用 90 名葡萄牙人的劳动力生产。由于葡萄牙生产布匹所需的劳动力较少，因此人们普遍认为该国在布匹制造方面比英国具有生产成本优势。通过表明英国布料的生产成本低于葡萄牙布料，这一推论将在这里被证明是错误的。这一发现驳斥了人们普遍认为李嘉图为国际专业化制定了新的法律、原则或规则，称为“比较优势”。他使用了与亚当·斯密相同的专业化规则。国富论. 因此，斯密的绝对成本优势与李嘉图的比较成本优势的流行对立必须被摒弃。