A Tentative Model for the Volume of Trade between Countries

Abstract

paper aims to bring some structural features of international trade into relief. The analysis is based on the simultaneous application of a structural and explanatory model resembling an inputoutput model to the exchange of goods between ten European countries in 1958. The nature of the experiment made it necessary to confine the analysis at this stage to a relatively limited set of data, but there is nothing, in principle, to prevent the extension of the analysis to the world trade as a whole. Changes over time were also left outside the scope of this paper, so that the model employed is static. In spite of these restrictions the results are of interest and, as I believe, novel; they serve to indicate that the bilateral approach can be abandoned in investigating international trade, which can be treated as an integral whole within the framework of a single model or model system2.