This paper studies a laboratory economy with some of the prominent features of an international economic system. The patterns of trade and output predicted by the law of comparative advantage are observed evolving within the experimental markets. Market prices and quantities move in the direction of the competitive equilibrium, but the quantitative predictions of the (risk-neutral) competitive equilibrium are rejected. Considerable amounts of economic activity occur as disequilibria. Factor-price equalization is observed, but there is a universal tendency for factors of production to trade at prices below their marginal products.

This paper reports the first experiments designed to explore the behavior of economies with prominent features of international finance. Two “countries,” each with its own currency, were created. International trade could take place only through the operation of markets for currency. The law of one price and the flow of funds theory of exchange rate determination were used to produce general equilibrium models that captured much of the behavior of the economies. Prices of goods, as well as the exchange rate, evolve over time toward the predictions of the models. However, both the law of one price and purchasing power parity can be rejected for reasons that do not appear in the literature. Patterns of international trade were as predicted by the law of comparative advantage.