Giorgio Basevi, The United States Tariff Structure: Estimates of Effective Rates of Protection of United States Industries of United States Industries and Industrial Labor, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 48, No. 2 (May, 1966), pp. 147-160

Recent contributions to interrntional trade theory have attempted to introduce new and more concrete elements into traditional explanations of cornparative advantage.Thus Linder [10] has presented the hypothe sis that the volume of trade between two countries is larger the closer they are in terms of per capita income ; this fact being due, according to him , to the export potentiality developed in the two markets by the similar national demand patterns that accompany similar levels of income. Drèze [4], inquiring into the export-import performance of Belgium, advanced the hypothesis that small countries have a comparative advantage in products that are internationally standardized and subject to economies of scale. In fact, only large markets would allow exploitation of economies of scale ; thus, only large countries are able to produce efficiently products having national characteristics that differentiate them from foreign products, when their production entails economies of scale. On the other hand, the market for internationally standardized products is world-wide and small countries are, in it , on the same footing as large ones. This would give them a comparative advantage to specialize their production into the latter products, export them and import the former products.