International competitiveness and specialization

This paper takes as its starting point the idea that the overall benefits of competition are largely determined by dynamic changes in market patterns. The opportunities in trade depend obviously on how a country can serve the market and more obviously on how competitive it is. Attention will therefore be centered mainly on the interaction between competitiveness and changes in the market structure. This phenomenon is abstrapted from conventional factors to explain trade patterns. The approach provides a descriptive and synthetic framework to identify and evaluate recent shifts in the patterns of competition and specialization of developed, developing and centrally planned economies in the OECD market.