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The Moral Scientific Nature of Stolper–Samuelson’s Proposal to ‘Bribe’ for Free Trade

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Abstract

The present inquiry revisits my past endeavours to reveal certain moral scientific aspects of the well-known Stolper–Samuelson theorem and the related less well-known proposal to ‘bribe’ for free trade. My inquiries have assumed, and so does the present one, two identical countries, identically endowed with homogeneous labour and capital (or two factors) but with internationally different tastes.

Based on a paper presented at the International Workshop on Positive and Normative Analysis in International Economics, held at Aoyama Gakuin University on 12 March 2010. I am indebted greatly to Murray Kemp, Martin McGuire, Michihiro Ohyama and Kaz Miyagiwa for their invaluable discussions thereafter. I am especially flattered by Bjarne S. Jensen’s enthusiasm for the 2x2x2 model of trade solved explicitly in terms of just one Cobb–Douglas parameter to represent both intra-national differences in sector technologies and also international differences in tastes. My final thanks go to Hidetaka Kawano and Amy Hwang, among many others, for joining to collaborate on further extensions of the present inquiry. The usual caveat applies.

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© 2012 Hiroshi Ohta

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Ohta, H. (2012). The Moral Scientific Nature of Stolper–Samuelson’s Proposal to ‘Bribe’ for Free Trade. In: Kemp, M.C., Nakagawa, H., Uchida, T. (eds) Positive and Normative Analysis in International Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230348202_3

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