[I am redistributing this message because many of you were not able to read it. HB]  
  
  
I would add to James Ahiakpor's comments on the question of a full  
employment assumption by Ricardo and other Classical School theorists my  
scepticism that "full employment" is capable of any definition that does not  
include institutional assumptions.  The Law of Comparative Advantage--the  
more general version of which Ludwig von Mises termed "The Law of  
Association"--assumes only willing traders with unequal capabilities in  
production.  It doesn't assume that either one of them commits to either a  
one-hour day or a 24-hour day of labor.  That also applies to the  
"full-time" employment of any of their higher-order goods.  Those  
assumptions would seem to be part of the institutional context within which  
the theory would be applied to the actual market process.  
  
Samuel Bostaph