International Trade and Structural Change: a Dynamic Model of Weak Sustainability

We present a dynamic Heckscher-Ohlin model to study structural change in a sustainability context. We show how resource rich economies maximising steady-state consumption should adopt different development strategies depending on the distribution of domestic wealth instruments (assets). Owing to the diversity of development strategies available to both natural resource rich and produced capital rich countries, trade liberalisation is not necessarily the best outcome for sustainability in both types of countries. We offer to amend Adjusted Net Savings (ANS) to include in the indicator trade-induced specialisation gains from trade to fund structural change and diversification, against economic incentives for specialisation.