Bentham’s economic theory of international trade

Nathalie Sigot ()
Additional contact information
Nathalie Sigot: PHARE - Philosophie, Histoire et Analyse des Représentations Économiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The paper analyses Bentham's theory of international trade, seeking to demonstrate its consistency with his utilitarianism. Bentham's principal concern was that restrictions to international trade would result in a loss in social welfare. He would broach this topic in two ways, thus providing two sorts of arguments in favour of trade liberalisation. In his first writing on this topic, his key argument was that economic policies threatened security within the country, by calling into question individual property rights. When he returned to the issue almost thirty years later, his perspective had changed, albeit not his conclusions regarding the harmful consequences of such restrictive policies: now his reasoning was based on a logic that appears similar to that of the surplus analysis. Related to the issue of security is also the price of subsistence goods: Bentham paid attention to the policies that should be applied to corn, which was the primary food source for people at the time. However, this safety imperative led him to hesitate regarding the international trade policy to be pursued for corn. I conclude by comparing Bentham's arguments for free trade with Smith's and Ricardo's.

Keywords: History of economic Thought; Jeremy Bentham; International Trade; Utilitarianism; Surplus analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04-15
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in The Making of Modern International Realm, Mikko Jakonen (University of Jyvaskyla, Finlande); Benjamin Bourcier (Université Catholique de Lille), Apr 2021, Zoom, France

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03953169

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().