| Abstract: | Heckscher's 1919 article originated the Heckscher-Ohlin theory of international trade. In 1987 Carl Uhr pointed out that Heckscher in 1928 made another major contribution to economics in a German-language article on ‘intermittently free goods’, presenting ‘a theory of imperfect competition nine years ahead of that by Joan Robinson and Edward Chamberlin, and a discussion of collective goods not priced by the market’. This paper summarizes the salient ideas of Heckscher's article. It evaluates its merits, originality and significance for the history of economic thought, and how it fits into the ‘revolutionary’ developments of the theory of imperfect competition in the 1930s. |
