The theoretical literature on endogenous growth and international trade suggests that comparative advantage is endogenous. Sector-specific learning by doing and technology transfer respectively provide reasons why initial patterns of international specialization may persist or exhibit mobility...

This article incorporates both the new trade and the endogenous growth theories to study the determinants of import volumes of France and Germany so as to explain their individual industrial competitiveness strategies – price or quality competition. This article is different because it studies...

It is customary in the empirical trade literature to analyze specialization patterns of countries using Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) measures. This paper explores the pros and cons of the most commonly used RCA index: the Balassa (1965) Index of RCA. After describing the properties of...