An Elementary Theory of Comparative Advantage / Arnaud Costinot.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Costinot, Arnaud.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w14645.

NBER working paper series no. w14645

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2009.

Summary:

Comparative advantage, whether driven by technology or factor endowment, is at the core of neoclassical trade theory. Using tools from the mathematics of complementarity, this paper offers a simple, yet unifying perspective on the fundamental forces that shape comparative advantage. The main results characterize sufficient conditions on factor productivity and factor supply to predict patterns of international specialization in a multi-factor generalization of the Ricardian model to which we refer as an "elementary neoclassical economy." These conditions, which hold for an arbitrarily large number of countries, goods, and factors, generalize and extend many results from the previous trade literature. They also offer new insights about the joint effects of technology and factor endowments on international specialization.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2009.