Advantage, Arnaud
If you start talking international trade with Arnaud Costinot, chances are he will have an advantage over you. Costinot, an MIT economist who specializes in trade, has an easy command of a large set of facts, models, ideas and outstanding research problems in the field.But Costinot, it happens, also has an edge over most other trade economists when it comes to one of the most famous ideas in economics: the Theory of Comparative Advantage, formulated by the Scotsman David Ricardo in 1817. Arnaud Costinot Photo: M. Scott Brauer Ricardo thought that instead of trying to produce a wide range of goods, countries could grow by specializing in the goods they could produce most cheaply, and then trading those goods with other countries. This made sense, Ricardo claimed, even when a country could make multiple products more cheaply, in absolute terms, than other countries.How? Suppose, Ricardo posited,...