La loi des coûts comparatifs et la formation des prix internationaux chez Ricardo

Renaud DU Tertre

Cahiers d’économie politique / Papers in Political Economy, 2008, issue 55, 113-140

Abstract: This article attempts to show that Ricardo’s law of comparative costs provides an original and complete model, as opposed to the accounts of neoclassical economists. Ricardo’s approach comprises three parts. The first one shows that the country starts having an interest to participate in international trade when the terms of trade deviate from its internal relative costs. The second part establishes that the process of international trade is regulated by the adjustment of relative nominal wages, expressed in a common unit of account, in order to make exported prices comparable. The third part tries to demonstrate that the exchange rate and international terms of trade are determinate when the balance of payments of the given country realises an equilibrium state. Such mechanism is asserted here as it allows to underline the precarious and instable character of this equilibrium.

JEL-codes: B12 F10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cairn.info/acheter_article.php?ID_ARTICLE=CEP_055_0113 (application/pdf)

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:cpo:journl:y:2008:i:55:p:113-140

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
142 rue du faubourg Saint-Martin. 75010 Paris, France.

Access Statistics for this article

Cahiers d’économie politique / Papers in Political Economy is currently edited by Claire Pignol

More articles in Cahiers d’économie politique / Papers in Political Economy from L'Harmattan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Carlos Andrés Vasco Correa ().