International trade

Bibliographic data

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

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part I. Theory

Collection:: Economics Books

38 INTERNATIONAL TRADE countries to the same goods) they will tend to be lower in price. Conversely they will tend to be higher if the effectiveness of labor in producing them is small. Concerning real wages also — wages in terms of commodities — no general rule can be laid down. Most persons would say that the people of the country where high wages prevail are more pros- perous than those of countries with low wages. They may be or may not be. They are indeed better off as purchasers and con- sumers of international commodities; these being at the same prices everywhere. As regards domestic commodities, on which much the larger part of their money income is spent, they may be better off or may not be. It depends on the prices of these, which depend in turn, as we have just seen, on the effectiveness of labor in making them. The prices of domestic commodities may be higher than in other countries, and the people of the high-money- wages country, tho prosperous as purchasers of foreign goods, may be so much less prosperous in their domestic transactions that the net balance may be against them : their commodity wages may be less than in countries with low money wages. I have just referred to the common but mistaken impression that a country of high money wages is necessarily more prosperous than one with low money wages. There are other common impressions even more widespread and more unqualifiedly wrong. Perhaps most familiar and most unfounded of all is the belief that complete freedom of trade would bring about an equalization of money wages the world over. It is a belief held especially in countries of high wages like the United States, and it goes with — indeed, is a part of — the most persuasive argument in favor of a policy of tariff protection. It seems plain as a pikestaff to the average person — to the average employer not less than to the average workman — that the country in which money wages are low can undersell the country paying high money wages; and that if the two compete without restriction, wages must become the same in both. The reasoning of the preceding chapters shows that there is no such tendency to equalization. Countries with high money wages trade with those of low money wages, to the advantage

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