The Theory of Commercial Policy (Essays in International Economic Theory)

These two volumes contain seventy essays chosen largely for the originality of their contributions.

The first volume contains several classic papers. Among them are the many contributions to the theory of distortions in the 1960s which laid the foundations of the postwar theory of commercial policy. Also included are Bhagwati's important papers of the 1970s and 1980s which have shaped a new revolution in the theory of trade and welfare: the political-economy-theoretic analysis of DUP (directly-unproductive profit-seeking) activities. Influential essays on the nonequivalence of tariffs and quotas, immiserizing growth, cost-benefit analysis in open economies, and other major areas of trade theory are covered.

The second volume presents essays that have opened up new areas of analysis in the theory of international trade and in the associated fields of public finance and developmental economics. Bhagwati's seminal work on the novel question of the appropriate income tax jurisdiction in the presence of international factor mobility, his well-known analyses of the consequences of skilled migration, the problem of the optimal choice between international capital and labor mobility, are all included.