The “New” Theories of Trade and UK's Comparative Advantage in Engineering Products

Abstract

The Leontief Paradox (Leontief, 1953) generated two major responses. There was, on the one hand, the body of research which was directed at further empirical verification of the simple Heckscher‐Ohlin theory using other countries' data. On the other hand, there were the studies which attempted to explain the paradox by turning on the alleged invalidity of specific Heckscher‐Ohlin assumptions. It was from the latter category that the “new” theories of trade emerged as evolutionary extensions of the basic Heckscher‐Ohlin theory. These hypotheses are concerned with the separate influences of inter‐country differences in specific labour skills, technology, and scale economies on the pattern of trade flows in manufactures.

Citation

Akano, O. and Ingham, K. (1982), "The “New” Theories of Trade and UK's Comparative Advantage in Engineering Products", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 61-67. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb002547