对外贸易大学讲师之国际贸易英文讲稿.docVIP

对外贸易大学讲师之国际贸易英文讲稿 Dynamic Effects and Economic Growth The simple comparative advantage model assumed that trade dose not change a countrys stock of resources or the efficiency with which it utilizes those resources. This static assumption makes no allowances for the dynamic changes that might result from trade. If we relax this assumption, it becomes apparent that opening an economy to trade is likely to generate dynamic gains of two sorts. First, free trade might increase a countrys stock of resources as increased supplies of labor and capital from abroad become available for use within the country. For example, more resources have become available in Eastern Europe since the early 1990s since many Western businesses have been investing significant capital in the former Communist countries. Second, free trade might also increase the efficiency with which a country uses its resources. Gains in the efficiency of resource utilization could arise from a number of factors. For example, economies of large-scale production might become available as trade expands the size of the total market available to domestic firms. Trade might make better technology from abroad available to domestic firms; better technology can increase labor productivity or the productivity of land.(The so-called green revolution had this effect on agricultural outputs in developing countries.) Also, opening an economy to foreign competition might stimulate domestic producers to look for ways to increase their efficiency. Again, this phenomenon has arguably been occurring in the once-protected markets of Eastern Europe, where many former state monopolies have had to increase the efficiency of their operations to survive in the competitive world market. The Samuelson Critique Samuelson’s critique looks at what happens when a rich country—the United States—enters into a free trade agreement with a poor country—China—that rapidly improves its productivity after 1 the introduction of a free trad