Post-war discussions of international economics have devoted considerable attention to four closely related topics: the “dollar shortage”; the elasticity in demand and supply of exports and imports with respect to price and income changes; the relative shares in world trade supplied by various countries and changes in these shares; and the relevance for many contemporary problems of much of the theory of trade, based mainly as it is on assumptions of pure and perfect competition and cast largely in terms of the three variables – price, income, and quantity. Underlying these issues has been the more general question of what are the main determinants of international trade in the modern (post-World War I) world and what is their relative importance.

Post-war discussions of international economics have devoted considerable attention to four closely related topics: the “dollar shortage”; the elasticity in demand and supply of exports and imports with respect to price and income changes; the relative shares in world trade supplied by various countries and changes in these shares; and the relevance for many contemporary problems of much of the theory of trade, based mainly as it is on assumptions of pure and perfect competition and cast largely in terms of the three variables – price, income, and quantity. Underlying these issues has been the more general question of what are the main determinants of international trade in the modern (post-World War I) world and what is their relative importance.

Post-war discussions of international economics have devoted considerable attention to four closely related topics: the “dollar shortage”; the elasticity in demand and supply of exports and imports with respect to price and income changes; the relative shares in world trade supplied by various countries and changes in these shares; and the relevance for many contemporary problems of much of the theory of trade, based mainly as it is on assumptions of pure and perfect competition and cast largely in terms of the three variables – price, income, and quantity. Underlying these issues has been the more general question of what are the main determinants of international trade in the modern (post-World War I) world and what is their relative importance.