Factor Mobility And International Trade

This up-to-date synthesis of the basic tools and survey results in international trade theory is unique in giving factor mobility equal billing with goods trade, highlighting factor flows in the context of a mainstream approach to trade theory. The importance of the international flow of factors has grown in recent decades, primarily because of increasing returns, imperfect competition, multinational corporations, and labor migration; theories of factor mobility and trade in goods can no longer be lumped together. Using sophisticated techniques, as well as simple economic intuitions and easy-to-follow diagrams, Kar-yiu Wong systematically presents within unified frameworks all the basic analytical techniques involved in the theories of international trade and factor mobility. Wong also provides extensive coverage of such issues as interactions between international trade in goods and capital movement, external economies of scale, monopolistic competition and differentiated products, oligopoly, welfare economics of international trade, and policy analysis for various models, and he devotes two separate chapters to multinational corporations and international labor migration. New techniques and approaches to these issues are suggested, and new results obtained for many of them. For instance, the discussion of intra-industry trade in the presence of positive transport cost and arbitrage is new, as is the systematic examination of the relationship between international trade in goods and factor mobility with external economies of scale, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly. Of particular importance to trade theorists, these issues serve as the link between neoclassical and imperfect-competition models.

This book unveils a potent new approach to one of the oldest debates in political economy--that over whether class conflict or group competition is more prevalent in politics. It goes further than any study to date by outlining the conditions under which one type of political conflict is more likely than the other. Michael Hiscox focuses on a critical issue affecting support for and opposition to free trade--factor mobility, or the ability of those who own a factor of production (land, labor, or capital) to move it from one industry to another. He argues that the types of political coalitions that form in trade politics depend largely on the extent to which factors are mobile between industries. Class coalitions are more likely where factor mobility is high, Hiscox demonstrates, whereas narrow, industry-based coalitions predominate where it is low. The book also breaks new ground by backing up the theory it advances with systematic evidence from the history of trade politics in six nations over the last two centuries, using a combination of case studies and quantitative analysis. It makes fresh conclusions about the forces shaping trade policy outcomes--conclusions that yield surprising insights into the likely evolution of the global trading system and U.S. trade policy in particular. International Trade and Political Conflict is a major contribution to the scholarly literature while being accessible to anyone interested in understanding and predicting developments in trade policy.

In these six essays Ronald Findlay explores modifications to the factor proportions model, looking in particular at what happens when human capital and land use are allowed to vary endogenously. The standard version of the Heckscher-Ohlin model of international trade treats the factors of production--land, labor, and capital--as essentially analytically similar and symmetrical. In these six essays Ronald Findlay explores modifications to the factor proportions model, looking in particular at what happens when human capital and land use are allowed to vary endogenously.Findlay extends the factor proportions theory of international trade to consider capital accumulation, income distribution, and factor mobility in a growing world economy. Among the questions he addresses are such fundamental issues as the conditions under which international trade equalizes the rate of interest; the effects of learning and invention on economic growth and comparative advantage; the role of human capital and skill formation in determining patterns of comparative advantage and the reciprocal effect of international trade on these variables through its impact on wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers; the incorporation of new territories into a trading system by extensions of the frontier and labor migration as in the establishment of the Atlantic economy of the nineteenth century; and the impact of reductions in transport costs of industrial raw materials on global patterns of manufacturing activity and comparative advantage.The Ohlin Lectures

The aim of this book is to use geometry as the main medium of exposition to take those with a basic knowledge of economics from an elementary application of that knowledge to the most recent developments in the field of inter and intra-industry international trade theory.

This title provides a comprehensive introduction to the key issues in trade and liberalization of services. Providing a useful overview of the players involved, the barriers to trade, and case studies in a number of service industries, this is ideal for policymakers and students interested in trade.