Comments on Professor Johnson’s Paper: 1

Abstract

A few years ago, Professor Raymond Vernon asked, referring to the present generation of international trade theorists, ‘Why do you all have to be so neoclassical?’ He was piqued, I think, not by the relentless application of neoclassical rigour but rather by the stuffy adherence to respectably neo-classical assumptions. Professor Johnson’s exposition of a new theory based on institu­tional aspects of the discovery and dissemination of production and consumption knowledge, and the recent literature on which it builds, should provide cause for cheer. The new ideas about patterns of trade indeed constitute a highly important development for the future of international economic relations, both in explaining or predicting the structure of trade among nations and in shedding light on problems of international economic policy.