| Abstract: | Abstract. Edgeworth showed that a free-trading country might be impoverished by its own technical improvements if they are confined to the export industry and if no good is inferior in consumption. More recently it has been shown that improvements confined to the country's import competing industry can never be impoverishing if, in that country, no commodity is inferior in consumption. However, in all available proofs of these propositions, it has been assumed that for each country there exists an autarkic equilibrium. It will be shown that, without that assumption, the second proposition must be severely qualified. |
