Вариант 12.

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International Economic Theory

Text. How Nations Are Classified

Nations have been long classified into groups that indicate their economic strengths and weaknesses

as well as their stage of development.

Industrial or developed nations are those that have achieved substantial manufacturing and service capability in addition to advanced techniques in agriculture and raw material extraction.

Developing nations are usually those whose production sector is dominated by agriculture and mineral resources and are in the process of building up or modernizing industrial capacity. Typically, these sectors not only serve home markets but also produce for exports. The objective is to try to earn funds from selling abroad in order to have buying power available for future purchases of foreign goods and services. Also, the aim can be to reduce dependence upon foreigners, i.e., to pursue import substitution policies. To achieve a reasonable balance between international payments and revenues is a constant challenge.

Much attention in international economic and political affairs understandably focuses on the welfare gap between the developed and developing nations. Comparisons are frequently made among countries using such measures of economic progress and competitive strength as cultivated land area, population, per capita income and wealth, unit labor costs, prices, external debt, and monetary reserves.

For several decades the leading Western, free (noncommunist) industrial nations have been referred to as the First World. The Second World has encompassed the socialist-communist nations. But more and more, these Second World nations and states are being included as developing countries as they adopt more market-oriented democratic principles. The Third World has covered developing countries. There is some reference to the resource-poor nations in the Third World group as the Fourth World.

Most of the trade of the world occurs between the industrialized countries. The remaining nations strive to strengthen their economies by trade, barter, aid, and concessions from the major developed nations. The petroleum-rich countries, particularly the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), control much of the world's immediately available energy resources which the industrial nations need in order to keep their economies functioning.

The emerging countries with resources and expanding industrial capability, e.g., Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, are more and more called the new industrial countries (NICs or «Tigers»). Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, and Chile are moving toward the same status.

The generalization is often made that most of the richer nations are located in the Northern Hemisphere and the poorer nations in the Southern Hemisphere. This has given rise to the expression «»North/South» in reference to many international problems, confrontations, and dialogues. East/West has also been used to describe similar problem relations among nations, but with diminishing intensity as political and economic tensions have eased between communist and capitalist countries.

International economic theorists have developed three important theoretical conclusions:

The theory of comparative advantage states that mutually advantageous trade will always be possible because trade patterns will be based on relative prices rather than absolute prices. That is, no one country can have a comparative advantage in all commodities. As initially formulated, the theory of comparative advantage is based on labor-cost differentials. Later researchers have shown that both supply and demand factors play a role in determining the relative prices of commodities that form the basis for mutually advantageous exchange.

The Heckscher-Ohlin theory states that a country will tend to export the commodity that uses relatively more of the factor of production that is relatively most abundant in that country. The theory assumes that countries have different quantities of the various factors of production such as land, labor, and capital, but have identical production functions.

3. The factor-price equalization theory states that under absolutely free international trade, not only the prices of the traded products but also the prices of the factors of production (inputs) such as land, labor, and capital will be equalized among countries.