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| == '''[[International economics]]''' ==
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| ''by [[User:Nick Gardner|Nick Gardner]] and [[User:Martin Baldwin-Edwards|Martin Baldwin-Edwards]]
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| | | ==Footnotes== |
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| '''International economics''' is concerned with the effects upon economic activity of international differences in productive resources and consumer preferences and the institutions that affect them. It seeks to explain the patterns and consequences of transactions and interactions between the inhabitants of different countries, including trade, investment and migration.
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| For definitions of terms shown in italics in this article see the Related Articles subpage.
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| ===International trade===
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| ====Scope and methodology====
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| The economic theory of international trade differs from the remainder of economic theory mainly because of the comparatively limited international mobility of the capital and labour
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| <ref>[http://www.econlib.org/library/npdbooks/Viner/vnstt10.html "A note on the scope and method of the theory of international trade" in the appendix of Jacob Viner ''Studies in the Theory of International Trade'' : Harper and Brothers 1937]</ref>. In that respect, it would appear to differ in degree rather than in principle from the trade between remote regions in one country. Thus the methodology of international trade economics differs little from that of the remainder of economics. However, the direction of academic research on the subject has been influenced by the fact that governments have often sought to impose restrictions upon international trade, and the motive for the development of trade theory has often been a wish to determine the consequences of such restrictions. | |
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| The branch of trade theory which is conventionally categorized as "classical" consists mainly of the application of deductive logic, originating with Ricardo’s Theory of ''Comparative Advantage'' and developing into a range of theorems that depend for their practical value upon the realism of their postulates. "Modern" trade theory, on the other hand, depends mainly upon ''empirical analysis''.
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| ====Classical theory====
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| The law of ''[[comparative advantage]]'' provides a logical explanation of international trade as the rational consequence of the comparative advantages that arise from inter-regional differences - regardless of how those differences arise. Since its exposition by John Stuart Mill <ref>[http://www.econlib.org/Library/Ricardo/ricP2a.html#Ch.7,%20On%20Foreign%20Trade,%20comparative%20advantage David Ricardo ''On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation'' Chapter 7 John Murray, 1821. Third edition.(First published: 1817)]</ref> the techniques of neo-classical economics have been applied to it to model the patterns of trade that would result from various postulated sources of comparative advantage. However, extremely restrictive (and often unrealistic) assumptions have had to be adopted in order to make the problem amenable to theoretical analysis. The best-known of the resulting models, the [[Heckscher-Ohlin theorem]] (H-O)
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| <ref>[http://internationalecon.com/Trade/Tch60/T60-8.php The Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem]</ref> depends upon the assumptions of no international differences of technology, productivity, or consumer preferences; no obstacles to pure competition or free trade and no scale economies. On those assumptions, it derives a model of the trade patterns that would arise solely from international differences in the relative abundance of labour and capital (referred to as factor endowments). The resulting theorem states that, on those assumptions, a country with a relative abundance of capital would export capital-intensive products and import labour-intensive products. The theorem proved to be of very limited predictive value, as was demonstrated by what came to be known as the "[[Leontief Paradox]]" (the discovery that, despite its capital-rich factor endowment, America was exporting labour-intensive products and importing capital-intensive products <ref>Wassily Leontief, ''Domestic Production and Foreign Trade: The American Capital Position Re-examined'' Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. XCVII p332 September 1953</ref>) Nevertheless the theoretical techniques (and many of the assumptions) used in deriving the H-O model were subsequently used to derive further theorems. The [[Stolper-Samuelson theorem]] <ref>[http://www.ucd.ie/economic/staff/pneary/pdf/stolpers.pdf The Stolper-Samuelson theorem]</ref> <ref>Wolfgang Stolper and Paul Samuelson ''Protection and Real Wages''' Review of Economic Studies, 9: 58-73. 1941</ref> , which is often described as a corollary of the H-O theorem, was an early example. In its most general form it states that if the price of a good rises (falls) then the price of the factor used intensively in that industry will also rise (fall) while the price of the other factor will fall (rise). In the international trade context for which it was devised it means that trade lowers the real wage of the scarce factor of production, and protection from trade raises it. Another corollary of the H-O theorem is Samuelson's factor price equalisation theorem <ref> Paul Samuelson: "International Trade and the Equalization of Factor Prices", '' The Economic Journal'' June 1949</ref> which states that as trade between countries tends to equalise their product prices, it tends also to equalise the prices paid to their factors of production. Those theories have sometimes been taken to mean that trade between an industrialised country and a developing country would lower the wages of the unskilled in the industrialised country. (But, as noted below, that conclusion depends upon the unlikely assumption that productivity is the same in the two countries). Large numbers of learned papers have been produced in attempts to elaborate on the H-O and Stolper-Samuelson theorems, and while many of them are considered to provide valuable insights, they have seldom proved to be directly applicable to the task of explaining trade patterns.
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| ''[[International economics|.... (read more)]]''
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| ! style="text-align: center;" | [[International economics#References|notes]]
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| {{reflist|2}} | | {{reflist|2}} |
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Latest revision as of 10:19, 11 September 2020
1901 photograph of a stentor (announcer) at the Budapest
Telefon Hirmondó.
Telephone newspaper is a general term for the telephone-based news and entertainment services which were introduced beginning in the 1890s, and primarily located in large European cities. These systems were the first example of electronic broadcasting, and offered a wide variety of programming, however, only a relative few were ever established. Although these systems predated the invention of radio, they were supplanted by radio broadcasting stations beginning in the 1920s, primarily because radio signals were able to cover much wider areas with higher quality audio.
History
After the electric telephone was introduced in the mid-1870s, it was mainly used for personal communication. But the idea of distributing entertainment and news appeared soon thereafter, and many early demonstrations included the transmission of musical concerts. In one particularly advanced example, Clément Ader, at the 1881 Paris Electrical Exhibition, prepared a listening room where participants could hear, in stereo, performances from the Paris Grand Opera. Also, in 1888, Edward Bellamy's influential novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887 foresaw the establishment of entertainment transmitted by telephone lines to individual homes.
The scattered demonstrations were eventually followed by the establishment of more organized services, which were generally called Telephone Newspapers, although all of these systems also included entertainment programming. However, the technical capabilities of the time meant that there were limited means for amplifying and transmitting telephone signals over long distances, so listeners had to wear headphones to receive the programs, and service areas were generally limited to a single city. While some of the systems, including the Telefon Hirmondó, built their own one-way transmission lines, others, including the Electrophone, used standard commercial telephone lines, which allowed subscribers to talk to operators in order to select programming. The Telephone Newspapers drew upon a mixture of outside sources for their programs, including local live theaters and church services, whose programs were picked up by special telephone lines, and then retransmitted to the subscribers. Other programs were transmitted directly from the system's own studios. In later years, retransmitted radio programs were added.
During this era telephones were expensive luxury items, so the subscribers tended to be the wealthy elite of society. Financing was normally done by charging fees, including monthly subscriptions for home users, and, in locations such as hotel lobbies, through the use of coin-operated receivers, which provided short periods of listening for a set payment. Some systems also accepted paid advertising.
