Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free TradeAbout two hundred years ago, largely as a result of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, free trade achieved an intellectual status unrivaled by any other doctrine in the field of economics. What accounts for the success of free trade against then prevailing mercantilist doctrines? And how well has free trade withstood various theoretical attacks that have challenged it since Adam Smith's time? In this readable intellectual history, Douglas Irwin explains how the idea of free trade has endured against the tide of the abundant criticisms that have been leveled against it from the ancient world and Adam Smith's day to the present. An accessible, nontechnical look at one of the most important concepts in the field of economics, Against the Tide will allow the reader to put the ever new guises of protectionist thinking into the context of the past and discover why the idea of free trade has so successfully prevailed over time. |
From inside the book
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... debates has been with those advocating restrictions on trade to demonstrate how such policies would contribute to a country's economic wealth . One survey reports that 95 percent of economists questioned in the United States ( and 88 ...
... debates over the economic merits of free trade . After describing the economic arguments against free trade and for protec- tion , the ensuing debate over the validity and generality of these theoretical cases among their proponents and ...
... debates.3 These include political arguments ( e.g. , protection of an industry for na- tional defense ) or others broadly geared toward achieving some vaguely national or social objective ( e.g. , greater self - sufficiency in certain ...
... debates surrounding U.S. trade policy in the 1980s to understand the economic reasoning be- hind the theory of strategic trade policy . Circumstances may give rise to a body of work — new theories and fresh analysis , for example — and ...
... debate has taken place in Britain . In some periods , such as the mercantilist epoch , economic thought in places such as France , Spain , and elsewhere closely mirrored that in Britain ( or vice versa ) , so little is lost in focusing ...
Contents
Early Foreign Trade Doctrines | 11 |
The English Mercantilist Literature | 26 |
The Emergence of Free Trade Thought | 45 |
Physiocracy and Moral Philosophy | 64 |
Adam Smiths Case for Free Trade | 75 |
Free Trade in Classical Economics | 87 |
Torrens and the Terms of Trade Argument | 101 |
Mill and the Infant Industry Argument | 116 |
Manoilescu and the Wage Differential Argument | 153 |
The Australian Case for Protection | 172 |
The Welfare Economics of Free Trade | 180 |
Keynes and the Macroeconomics of Protection | 189 |
Strategic Trade Policy | 207 |
The Past and Future of Free Trade | 217 |
References | 231 |
253 | |