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In economics, gains from trade are the net benefits to economic agents from being allowed an increase in voluntary trading with each other. In technical terms, they are the increase of consumer surplus [1] plus producer surplus [2] from lower tariffs [3] or otherwise liberalizing trade. [4]
Gains from trade are commonly described as resulting from:
Market incentives, such as reflected in prices of outputs and inputs, are theorized to attract factors of production, including labor, into activities according to comparative advantage, that is, for which they each have a low opportunity cost. The factor owners then use their increased income from such specialization to buy more-valued goods of which they would otherwise be high-cost producers, hence their gains from trade. The concept may be applied to an entire economy for the alternatives of autarky (no trade) or trade. A measure of total gains from trade is the sum of consumer surplus and producer profits or, more roughly, the increased output from specialization in production with resulting trade. [8] Gains from trade may also refer to net benefits to a country from lowering barriers to trade such as tariffs on imports. [9]
David Ricardo in 1817 first clearly stated and proved the principle of comparative advantage, [10] termed a "fundamental analytical explanation" for the source of gains from trade. [11] But from publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1776, it was widely argued, that, with competition and absent market distortions, such gains are positive in moving toward free trade and away from autarky or prohibitively high import tariffs. Rigorous early contemporary statements of the conditions under which this proposition holds are found in Samuelson in 1939 and 1962. [12] For the analytically tractable general case of Arrow-Debreu goods, formal proofs came in 1972 for determining the condition of no losers in moving from autarky toward free trade. [13]
The proof does not state that no involvement is the best economic outcome. Rather, a large economy might be able to set taxes and subsidies to its benefit at the expense of other economies. Later results of Kemp and others showed that in an Arrow-Debreu world with a system of lump-sum compensatory mechanisms, corresponding to a customs union for a given subset set of countries (described by free trade among a group of economies and a common set of tariffs), there is a common set of world' tariffs such that no country would be worse off than in the smaller customs union. The suggestion is that if a customs union has advantages for an economy, there is a worldwide customs union that is at least as good for each country in the world. [14]
Classical economists maintain that there are two methods to measure the gains from trade: 1) international trade increases national income which helps us to get low priced imports; 2) gains are measured in terms of trade. To measure the gains from the trade, comparison of a country's cost of production with a foreign country's cost of production for the same product is required. However, it is very difficult to acquire the knowledge of cost of production and cost of imports in a domestic country. Therefore, terms of trade method is preferable to measure the gains from trade.
There are several factors which determine the gains from international trade:
The gains from trade can be clad into static and dynamic gains from trades. Static Gains means the increase in social welfare as a result of maximized national output due to optimum utilization of country's factor endowments or resources. Dynamic gains from trade, are those benefits which accelerate economic growth of the participating countries.
Static gains are the result of the operation of the theory of comparative cost in the field of foreign trade. On this principle countries make the optimum use of their available resources so that their national output is greater which also raises the level of social welfare in the country. When there is an introduction of foreign trade in the economy the result is called the static gains from trade.
Dynamic gains from trade relate to economic development of the economy. Specialization of the country for the production of best suited commodities which result in a large volume of quality production which promotes growth. Thus the extension of domestic market to foreign market will accelerate economic growth.
David Ricardo was a British political economist. He was one of the most influential of the classical economists along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith and James Mill. Ricardo was also a politician, and a member of the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland.
Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold economically liberal positions, while economic nationalist and left-wing political parties generally support protectionism, the opposite of free trade.
In an economic model, agents have a comparative advantage over others in producing a particular good if they can produce that good at a lower relative opportunity cost or autarky price, i.e. at a lower relative marginal cost prior to trade. Comparative advantage describes the economic reality of the work gains from trade for individuals, firms, or nations, which arise from differences in their factor endowments or technological progress.
This aims to be a complete article list of economics topics:
Classical economics, classical political economy, or Smithian economics is a school of thought in political economy that flourished, primarily in Britain, in the late 18th and early-to-mid 19th century. Its main thinkers are held to be Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Robert Malthus, and John Stuart Mill. These economists produced a theory of market economies as largely self-regulating systems, governed by natural laws of production and exchange.
In microeconomics, a production–possibility frontier (PPF), production possibility curve (PPC), or production possibility boundary (PPB) is a graphical representation showing all the possible options of output for two goods that can be produced using all factors of production, where the given resources are fully and efficiently utilized per unit time. A PPF illustrates several economic concepts, such as allocative efficiency, economies of scale, opportunity cost, productive efficiency, and scarcity of resources.
An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society or a given geographic area. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making processes, and patterns of consumption that comprise the economic structure of a given community.
Output in economics is the "quantity of goods or services produced in a given time period, by a firm, industry, or country", whether consumed or used for further production. The concept of national output is essential in the field of macroeconomics. It is national output that makes a country rich, not large amounts of money.
In business, total value added is calculated by tabulating the unit value added per each unit of product sold. Thus, total value added is equivalent to revenue minus intermediate consumption. Value added is a higher portion of revenue for integrated companies and a lower portion of revenue for less integrated companies ; total value added is very closely approximated by compensation of employees, which represents a return to labor, plus earnings before taxes, representative of a return to capital.
The Heckscher–Ohlin model is a general equilibrium mathematical model of international trade, developed by Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin at the Stockholm School of Economics. It builds on David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage by predicting patterns of commerce and production based on the factor endowments of a trading region. The model essentially says that countries export the products which use their relatively abundant and cheap factors of production, and import the products which use the countries' relatively scarce factors.
International economics is concerned with the effects upon economic activity from international differences in productive resources and consumer preferences and the international institutions that affect them. It seeks to explain the patterns and consequences of transactions and interactions between the inhabitants of different countries, including trade, investment and transaction.
Trade diversion is an economic term related to international economics in which trade is diverted from a more efficient exporter towards a less efficient one by the formation of a free trade agreement or a customs union. Total cost of good becomes cheaper when trading within the agreement because of the low tariff. This is as compared to trading with countries outside the agreement with lower cost goods but higher tariff. The related term Trade creation is when the formation of a trade agreement between countries decreases the price of the goods for more consumers, and therefore increases overall trade. In this case the more efficient producer with the agreement increases trade.
New trade theory (NTT) is a collection of economic models in international trade theory which focuses on the role of increasing returns to scale and network effects, which were originally developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The main motivation for the development of NTT was that, contrary to what traditional trade models would suggest, the majority of the world trade takes place between countries that are similar in terms of development, structure, and factor endowments.
Alan V. Deardorff is the John W. Sweetland Professor of International Economics and a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Ann Arbor. Deardorff received his Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University in 1971.
In economics, distribution is the way total output, income, or wealth is distributed among individuals or among the factors of production. In general theory and in for example the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts, each unit of output corresponds to a unit of income. One use of national accounts is for classifying factor incomes and measuring their respective shares, as in national Income. But, where focus is on income of persons or households, adjustments to the national accounts or other data sources are frequently used. Here, interest is often on the fraction of income going to the top x percent of households, the next x percent, and so forth, and on the factors that might affect them.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to economics:
Ricardian economics are the economic theories of David Ricardo, an English political economist born in 1772 who made a fortune as a stockbroker and loan broker. At the age of 27, he read An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and was energized by the theories of economics.
International trade theory is a sub-field of economics which analyzes the patterns of international trade, its origins, and its welfare implications. International trade policy has been highly controversial since the 18th century. International trade theory and economics itself have developed as means to evaluate the effects of trade policies.
This glossary of economics is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in economics, its sub-disciplines, and related fields.
