Intensive Lecture: "Comparative Advantage, Factor Accumulation, and Trade"
November 7, 2008
Professor Eric Bond, Vanderbilt University was invited to present a lecture entitled “Comparative Advantage, Factor Accumulation and Trade” at Keio University on November 7, 2008. The lecture was attended by a large number of students and research scholars. Under the traditional international trade model, when nations with the same production technologies conduct trade, their comparative advantages and patterns of trade are determined by the quantities (reserves) of the factors of production in each nation. Professor Bond's lecture applied this trade theory to a dynamic framework for theoretical analyses of trade patterns as the quantities of the factors of production change over time, and of the factors of production accumulation process. As an extension of these analyses, the lecture also discussed long-term economic disparities in trade and among nations, and noted the possibility that economic disparities among nations may actually wind up being maintained for a long period of time because of international trade.