Customer Reviews

Lectures on International Trade - 2nd Edition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book tries to solve most of the mathematical problems by diagrams and it skips algebra and regorous reasoning in most cases. Few chapters overcome this or have technical appendices. The technicality and theory is below graduate level. The book is fit more for an undergraduate program. A lot of ideas are being touched on (or cited) very briefly that makes it somehow confusing and forces one to refer to papers to get a more complete discussion. Chapters are very short (there are 34 chapters in 602 pages!) and normally jump into conclusions without enough reasoning. Also note that chapters don't have exercises. Some chapters are well written, while others are just a shadow of the whole idea. I think this book can be used to give you some idea what internation trade is, but it is not a complete package.

This book contains all the very best thinking done in international trade. The book is very densely written, and definitely aimed at those taking graduate level courses (with a good mathematical background). The explanations are very good, especially for graphs (a major shortcoming of most economics texts I think). This book serves as a permanent one-volume reference to any issues regarding international trade.

Although international trade theory/international economics is not the field I would like to specialize in, this is one of the textbooks I would like to buy and keep as a reference. The writing is clear; the authors make an effort to explain almost every step of an equation. Moreover, the graphs are fully explained. I highly recommend this book. I regret that I only used this book for one course, so we were not able to use it more. For graduate level trade theory, I do not think this textbook has a competitor.

It's a tough read as everything is explained in the least amount of words possible (which might be a pro for some). Especially useful as a reference. Biggest downside, of course, is that by now it is dated (2nd edition is from 1998) and does not contain recent theories, which at a graduate level, what one is most interested in.

This volume synthesizes decades of research in international trade theory. It is comprehensive, and graduate students and working professionals will find it a handy summary of a huge corpus of research. Material is presented in verbal, graphical, and light algebraic form, and the key background references are given at the end of each chapter. These are a little sparse but this is a quibble.

Be forewarned: the book is densely written (Jagdish saves his spare words for his polemics), and generations of graduate students have told me that they hate it. Big deal. This is the castor oil of international trade theory -- open up and drink it down -- it's good for you.