Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T02:39:55.957Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The Meade model of preferential trading: History, analytics and policy implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2009

Benjamin J. Cohen
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
Get access

Summary

Though the theory of preferential trading had its birth in Jacob Viner's (1950) celebrated work for the Carnegie Endowment, The Customs Union Issue, the first complete general-equilibrium model of preferential trading was provided by James Meade (1955) in the de Vries Lectures, delivered at the Netherlands School of Economics while the Benelux union was in progress and published as The Theory of Customs Unions. Remarkably, at a time when two-good models dominated the thinking of international trade theorists, Meade constructed a complete three-good, three-country model and even went on to extend it to a multicountry, multicommodity context. The model has proved as durable as Viner's concepts of trade creation and trade diversion with Lipsey (1958, chaps. 5–6, 1960), Mundell (1964), Vanek (1965, Appendix), Corden (1976), Collier (1979), McMillan and McCann (1981), and Lloyd (1982) making significant contributions to its further development. Insights emerging out of the model have also shaped the policy debate on regional integration (see Bhagwati and Panagariya, 1996a).

Peter Kenen has much in common with Meade. Like Meade, he has the unusual distinction of having advanced both branches of international economics: pure trade and finance. Those of us who had the opportunity to sit through his lectures on international trade can also recall his clever use of geometry, as was done by Meade (1952) in A Geometry of International Trade.

Type
Chapter
Information
International Trade and Finance
New Frontiers for Research
, pp. 57 - 88
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×