Trade and growth in New England

Jane Sneddon Little and Cathy E. Minehan

Annual Report, 1996, 3-15

Abstract: From the time when New England timber built the British navy and Salem boys sailed ginseng root to China and returned as wealthy men, New England?s growth has been tightly linked with international trade. The ties are no less compelling today. Trade raises living standards by promoting the efficient use of resources and encouraging the adoption of new technologies and productivity improvements. New England is a region that specializes in new technologies, a region with limited natural resources, and trade is essential to its future well-being. However, like technological change, increased trade can hurt some individuals, particularly the low-skilled, and their communities, at least in the short run. Understandably, fear of increased foreign competition spurs resistance to more open trade policies, like the creation and broadening of the NAFTA, even though, over the long run, such developments hold the promise of increasing incomes in New England, in the United States, and in our trading partners. There is no doubt freer trade can cause hardships, but their remedy lies not in espousing protectionism, but in adequately preparing New England?s work force for a rapidly changing global economy.

Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bostonfed.org/about/ar/ar1996/ar1996essay.pdf (application/pdf)
http://www.bostonfed.org/about/ar/ar1996/index.htm (text/html)

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:fip:fedbar:y:1996:p:3-15

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Annual Report from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Spozio ().