International trade

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1758394757

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136209

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Taussig, Frank William http://d-nb.info/gnd/120199459

Title:: International trade

Place of publication:: New York, NY

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XXI, 425 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part I. Theory

Collection:: Economics Books

20 INTERNATIONAL TRADE money wages, even tho they compel some domestic producers to lessen or abandon their output, are still the result and the indication of better conditions of the community at large. Another problem, and one on which there is much more occasion for difference of opinion among the discerning, concerns the range of industries in which we may expect to find varying costs. Wheat has been selected for illustration, because it is a commonplace in economics that agricultural commodities are usually produced at varying costs. But are not other classes of articles also produced at varying costs? The more ample information yielded in recent times by statistical inquiry, and our greater familiarity with the actual conditions of industry, both point to the conclusion that in manufacturing industries also we find, at any given time, costs not uniform. Side by side there are effective and ineffective producers. Must we not assume for the entire range of industry conditions like those assumed for wheat? And is not the theory of international trade to be readjusted accordingly ? It would carry us far from the main topics of the present volume to consider this question in all its ramifications. The discussion involves moot points, and illustrates once more the impossibility of separating the theory of international trade from the general prob- lems of economics. I content myself with a summary statement of the grounds for a negative answer; negative, that is, as regards any considerable modification of the theory of international trade. Manufacturing industries do show varying costs. Uniform costs are never found. But the causes of variation are different from those found in the extractive industries; the persistence of the phenomenon is due to different causes; and the consequences are different, both as regards domestic trade and international trade. The main cause of variation is in the personal element. Some managers of industry are more efficient than others, and cost of production at their hands is less. The explanations which usually figure in the discussions on this topic — better location of the low- cost establishments, better access to materials, better plant, better organization — are reducible to this one dominant element, the

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