In an influential paper entitled David Ricardo's Discovery of Comparative Advantageʺ, which was published in HOPE (Vol. 34, 2002), Roy J. Ruffin attempted to reconstruct the circumstances of Ricardo's discovery of the law of comparative advantage. Ruffin's article has inspired a number of...

This paper puts recent work on the benefits of variety into the context of a more complete quantitative analysis of the Dixit-Stiglitz-Krugman model of monopolistic competition. We show how the gains from globalization are reflected in the increase in variety and the exploitation of economies of...

We reconsider the economics of protection with an industry subject to increasing returns. Under strong comparative disadvantage in one country, any tariff-distorted equilibrium in which both countries produce the commodity must be unstable. In general, under strong comparative disadvantage, the...

We investigate the interplay, in international trade, between comparative advantage and increasing returns to scale that are external to the firm. We focus especially on "advantage reversals," where the country with a comparative-cost disadvantage in producing a good nevertheless is able to...

The paper gives a simple representation of how oligopoly affects the general theory of international trade. Three points are emphasized: the simplicity of trade under oligopoly in the Ricardian model; the equations describing the general equilibrium of a world economy with any number of goods,...

Human capital, because of its special role in innovative activity and technological progress, has formed the bedrock of the new theories of endogenous growth. Human capital, however, not only serves as an engine of growth, but also as a productive input along with labor and physical capital. In...