Titel

The aim of Trade Theo­ry is to ex­plain the exis­ting pat­terns of trade, the im­pact on the do­mestic eco­no­my, and the type of pu­blic po­li­ci­es that should be in­tro­du­ced to in­crea­se a coun­try's well-​being. Neo­clas­si­cal theo­ries focus on the op­ti­mal re­par­ti­ti­on of pro­duc­tion among coun­tries in order to take ad­van­ta­ge of each na­ti­on's avai­la­bi­li­ty of re­sour­ces (such as labor or na­tu­ral/phy­si­cal ca­pi­tal). They con­clu­de that all coun­tries can gain by trade thanks to in­ter­na­tio­nal spe­cia­liza­ti­on and a more ef­fi­ci­ent use of re­sour­ces. Mo­dern theo­ries try to rein­for­ce this re­sult by re­la­xing the most strin­gent as­sump­ti­ons (such as per­fect com­pe­ti­ti­on, no tran­sac­tion cost or de­crea­sing re­turns to scale), in order to ex­plain why trade often oc­curs bet­ween coun­tries with si­mi­lar fac­tor en­do­w­ment and pro­duc­ti­vi­ty le­vels, and why firms do off­sho­ring.