A01=Douglas A. Irwin
Agriculture
Autarky
Author_Douglas A. Irwin
Balance of trade
Capitalism
Category=KCLT
Category=KCZ
Classical economics
Classical school (criminology)
Commercial policy
Commodity
Comparative advantage
Competition
Consumer
Corn Laws
Cost-benefit analysis
Disadvantage
Division of labour
Economic efficiency
Economic equilibrium
Economic interventionism
Economic policy
Economics
Economist
Economy
Employment
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Expense
Export
Export subsidy
Factors of production
Free trade
Friedrich List
Import
Import Duty
Income
Infant industry
Infant industry argument
International trade
Investment
John Maynard Keynes
John Stuart Mill
Laissez-faire
Marginal product
Market failure
Market power
Measures of national income and output
Mercantilism
National wealth
Opportunity cost
Philosopher
Physiocracy
Political economy
Principles (retailer)
Principles of Political Economy
Productivity
Provision (accounting)
Publication
Quantity
Raw material
Real income
Scarcity
Self-interest
Subsidy
Supply (economics)
Tariff
Tax
The Wealth of Nations
Trade barrier
Trade restriction
Trade Through
Unemployment
Wage
Wealth
Product details
- ISBN 9780691058962
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 11 Jan 1998
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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About 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. Irwin traces the origins of the free trade doctrine from premercantilist times up to Adam Smith and the classical economists.
In lucid and careful terms he shows how Smith's compelling arguments in favor of free trade overthrew mercantilist views that domestic industries should be protected from import competition. Once a presumption about the economic benefits of free trade was established, various objections to free trade arose in the form of major arguments for protectionism, such as those relating to the terms of trade, infant industries, increasing returns, wage distortions, income distribution, unemployment, and strategic trade policy. Discussing the contentious historical controversies surrounding each of these arguments, Irwin reveals the serious analytical and practical weaknesses of each, and in the process shows why free trade remains among the most durable and robust propositions that economics has to offer for the conduct of economic policy.
Douglas A. Irwin is Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is the editor of Jacob Viner: Essays on the Intellectual History of Economics (Princeton).
