Re: Critique of Comparative Advantage Please

Title: Critique of Comparative Advantage Please

You will not find any "complete critique" of "comparative advantage" anywhere

because it is largley accepted as a kind of "folk wisdom" among economists.

When you begin to question it and trying to test and use it to explain the

variation of economic growth in contemporary periods, then you begin to see

the inadequacy and almost "redundancy" of the concept.

 

Therefore, more and more people have moved to the notion of

"competitive advantage" rather than "comparative advantage" to

explain why growth rates differ from one country to the next.

 

One of the leading pioneers in this direction is Michael Porter, who

by begining with the study of microlevel (coroproate) competitive edge to

the cross-national level, tried to explain both the successes and

failures of some economic models in the contemporary world.

 

Following this tradition, the World Economic Forum (yes, the controversial group)

has adopted a standardized procedure of measuring the global

competitiveness (see the publications such as World Competitiveness Yearbook 

or Global Competitiveness Report).  

 

The main emphasis is on the ability to innovate and effective policy-making

(or adaptibility). As opposed to "comparative advantage" economic

development depends not on what you have (endowed with) but on what you (collectively) do.

 

 

Quee-Young  Kim

Department of Sociology

University of Wyoming

kim@uwyo.edu

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Milo Jones [mailto:milo.jones@vub.ac.be]
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 1:05 PM
To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu
Subject: Critique of Comparative Advantage Please

Other than the Asia Times article highlighted on the list recently, can anyone point me towards some rigorous economic critiques of "Comparative Advantage" in World Systems or other economic literature?  I am looking for "quantitative" and/or "practical" rather than normative criticism of the doctrine, and am not having too much luck in "mainstream" textbooks and articles... 

Thank you,

Milo Jones

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Milo Jones
Brussels School of International Studies
Belgium