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International Trade - Theory and Policy, 2010a

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where KC <strong>and</strong> KS are the quantities of capital used in clothing <strong>and</strong> steel production,<br />

respectively. K represents the capital endowment of the country. Full employment of capital implies the<br />

expression would hold with equality.<br />

Endowments<br />

The only difference between countries assumed in the model is a difference in endowments of capital <strong>and</strong><br />

labor.<br />

Definition<br />

A country is capital abundant relative to another country if it has more capital endowment per labor<br />

endowment than the other country. Thus in this model the United States is capital abundant relative to<br />

France if<br />

KL>K∗L∗,<br />

where K is the capital endowment <strong>and</strong> L the labor endowment in the United States <strong>and</strong>K∗ is the capital<br />

endowment <strong>and</strong> L∗ the labor endowment in France.<br />

Note that if the United States is capital abundant, then France is labor abundant since the above<br />

inequality can be rewritten to get<br />

L∗K∗>LK.<br />

This means that France has more labor per unit of capital for use in production than the United States.<br />

Dem<strong>and</strong><br />

Factor owners are the consumers of the goods. The factor owners have a well-defined utility function in<br />

terms of the two goods. Consumers maximize utility to allocate income between the two goods.<br />

In Chapter 5 "The Heckscher-Ohlin (Factor Proportions) Model", Section 5.9 "The Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem", we<br />

will assume that aggregate preferences can be represented by a homothetic utility function of the<br />

form U = CSCC, where CS is the amount of steel consumed <strong>and</strong> CC is the amount of clothing consumed.<br />

General Equilibrium<br />

The H-O model is a general equilibrium model. The income earned by the factors is used to purchase the<br />

two goods. The industries’ revenue in turn is used to pay for the factor services. The prices of outputs <strong>and</strong><br />

factors in an equilibrium are those that equalize supply <strong>and</strong> dem<strong>and</strong> in all markets simultaneously.<br />

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books<br />

Saylor.org<br />

187

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