SEMAINE D ÉTUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L ANALYSE ECONOMETRIOUE ETC.
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The phase of trade is the first to break through. It can be
perceived even as early as at the turn of the first millennium,
but more clearly later on, after the Renaissance « opening of
the minds » towards the outside world. A few important improvements
in the technique of transportation lead to discoveries
of new lands and extend the horizon of the known
world to include countries with climates and products previously
unknown. New possibilities of trade open up, with
a striking impact on the economic conditions of the whole
world. The trading nations are suddenly better off, not
because of a rise in world production, but because of a better
utilisation of the production which already takes place. Each
nation keeps her own institutions and organisational structure
of production, but now she can advantageously exchange the
products which are proper to her particular climate or localized
resources for products which she could never produce or which
she could produce only at much higher costs. The material
wealth of all peoples is increased just by exchange, by a better
spatial allocation of existing resources and products. This is
‘he merchant era, an era which represents perhaps the most
outstanding example of how all people can gain from trade.
Much slower to manifest itself is the phase of industry,
which requires already, and thus presupposes, trade. Industry
is a process of augmenting wealth through a material increase
in the quantity and number of products, to be reached by
the practical application of the advances of science, division
and specialisation of labour, better organisation, invention and
utilization of new sources of energy and new materials. Unlike
trade, industry requires changes in the organisational structure
of society. Therefore, it comes about slowly; but progressively.
[n fact, it requires long and painful social changes in the relalions
between men and the means of production before it can
fully break out in the English « industrial revolution » of the
sighteenth century. Of course, trade remains the natural and
necessary complement of industry but, as a cause of further
io| Pasinetti - pag.
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