Free trade between two countries (A and B) concentrates manufacturing, the invisibles (commerce, banking, shipping, insurance), capital, technology, and skills in A, the country that has an initial comparative advantage (however small) in manufacturing. Conversely, the country with a comparative...

This paper reviews the growing body of evidence on the relative economic standing of different regions of the world in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In general, it does not find support for Eurocentric claims regarding Western Europe's early economic lead. The Eurocentric...

From the standpoint of policies, the different branches of economics may be aggregated into two categories: dirigiste and laissez fairist. Dirigiste theories in economics have been based primarily on the complexity of commodities: this allows commodities to be ranked according to the...