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. |
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... greater amount of aggregate economic wealth . From this point on , the burden of proof in economic debates has been with those advocating restrictions on trade to demonstrate how such policies would contribute to a country's economic ...
... greater detail the thorny distributional issues that arise in taking economic welfare rather than economic wealth as the criterion for economic policy . societal considerations . Hence , there are a multitude of 4 INTRODUCTION.
... greater self - sufficiency in certain goods ) . Such considerations may or may not be important , but they will not be considered here . Economic analysis can contribute little in determining whether or not such policy objectives are ...
... greater appreciation of historical writings , I defend it here on two grounds . The first justification is simply a matter of convenience : the agenda of this book had to be limited to prevent it from growing to unmanageable proportions ...
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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 | |