The lack of a satisfactory definition of comparative advantage

Guido Ianni

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2025, vol. 32, issue 4, 500-521

Abstract: Comparative advantage is often defined by relative autarky prices to span the Ricardian and Heckscher-Onlin-Samuelson models. During the 1960s-1970s the impossibility of having a universal definition of CA was established and model-specific definitions were searched for. More recent contributions have shown that tradable capital goods pose insurmountable obstacles even for constructing model-specific definitions. Another strand of the literature restated autarky prices as the definition of CA but contented with an explanation of trade with barely any empirical content that is valid only under very special assumptions. A more precise and comprehensive definition of comparative advantage is therefore missing.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2024.2444926

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