NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Comparative Advantage and Long-Run Growth

Gene M. Grossman, Elhanan Helpman

NBER Working Paper No. 2809 (Also Reprint No. r1494)*
Issued in January 1991
NBER Program(s):   ITI    IFM

We construct a dynamic, two-country model of trade and growth in which endogenous technological progress results from the profit-maximizing behavior of entrepreneurs. We study the role that the external trading environment and that trade and industrial policies play in the determination of long-run growth rates. We find that cross-country differences in efficiency at R&D versus manufacturing (i.e. comparative advantage) bear importantly on the growth effects of economic structure and commercial policies. Our analysis allows for both natural and acquired comparative advantage, and we discuss the primitive determinants of the latter.

*Published: The American Economic Review, Vol. 80, No. 4, pp. 796-815, (September 1990) .

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