Science, Technology and Free Trade

The theory of international trade has traditionally played an extremely important role in the development of economic theory generally. It has also had a major influence on the policies of governments and on international relations. In fact there has seldom been an area of economic policy where pure theory was so frequently invoked either to justify or to condemn specific policies of one country or another. The importance of uneven development in the world economy and the uneven pace of technology accumulation have repeatedly re-emerged as issues which simply cannot be neglected in any satisfactory trade theory. Nor can trade theory be separated from the issues of growth and development and this book provides an illustration of this proposition. Trade, technology and growth theory are so intimately related that satisfactory progress depends on their integration within one coherent framework. The authors of the various chapters are all qualified to develop a critique of orthodox theory. All of them have worked on the role of technical change in competition between firms and countries and it is in this area that traditional trade theory is at its most vulnerable.
Soete, Dosi and Pavitt have already made contributions both to the critique of mainstream theory and to the development of a more satisfactory alternative. In this book the editors and their colleagues demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that it is really no longer possible to neglect what they describe as "Schumpeterian comparative advantage" in the explanation of international trade flows and the long-term shifts in the trade performance of nations.