《《vernon-international investment and international trade in the product cycle》.pdf

INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN THE PRODUCT CYCLE » RAYMOND VEBNON Location of new products, 191. —Th e maturing product, 196. —Th e standardized product, 202. Anyone who has sought to understand the shifts in internation- al trade and international investment over the past twenty years has chafed from time to time under an acute sense of the inadequacy of the available analytical tools. While the comparative cost con- cept and other basic concepts have rarely failed to provide some help, they have usually carried the analyst only a very little way toward adequate understanding. For the most part, it has been necessary to formulate new concepts in order to explore issues such as the strengths and limitations of import substitution in the de- velopment process, the implications of common market arrange- ments for trade and investment, the underlying reasons for the Leontief paradox, and other critical issues of the day. As theorists have groped for some more efiBcient tools, there has been a flowering in international trade and capital theory. But the very proliferation of theory has increased the urgency of the search for unifying concepts. It is doubtful that we shall flnd many prop- ositions that can match the simplicity, power, and universality of application of the theory of comparative advantage and the inter- national equilibrating mechanism; but unless the search for better tool