ON THE SMITHIAN ORIGINS OF "NEW" TRADE AND GROWTH THEORIES

Aykut Kibritçioğlu

Working Papers from Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences

Abstract: Adam Smith is generally ignored as an international trade theorist in textbooks because of the common belief that he only confirmed the rule of absolute advantages, and that, there is nothing "new" in his theoretical explanations about the determination of the structure of and gains from trade. Exceptional views can be found in Myint (1958, 1977), Hollander (1973), Bloomfield (1975) and Hong (1984). His vent-for-surplus approach underlines the importance of the existence of increasing returns to scale and of the technological change resulting from learning by doing for international trade and long-run economic growth. It has a pioneering characteristic from the perspective of the so-called "new" trade and growth theories developed in recent decades. This paper focuses only on this Smithian origins of new theories and demonstrates the main links between the following three aspects: (1) foreign trade, (2) economic growth and (3) Smith's ideas on economies of scale and learning by doing.

Keywords: long-run economic growthning by doing; technological externalities; approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 B13 F12 O30 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-his and nep-hpe
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Journal Article: On the Smithian origins of "new" trade and growth theories (2002)
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