YANG Qinglong, ZHANG Weifu：A Cost Analysis of International Trade: Perspective and Method

Abstract：Focusing on the proposition of “full cost shaping comparative advantage”, Xia(2011) argues that it is the misunderstanding of the principal of international comparative advantage.In fact, international trade activity is a kind of circulation in Marx economics, it not only affects the realization of value, but also participates in the creation of value.The cost concept in economics is the inevitable highest price in the process of using resources or production factors.From the perspective of connotation, “full cost” is the whole costs of using all resources or production factors; from the perspective of extension, “full cost” is a dynamic and open system which includes sub-systems such as production costs, transaction costs, environmental costs and inter-generational costs.Full cost is not only a kind of opportunity cost, but also international(necessary) cost, the comparative advantage and international value are unified from the perspective of full cost.In order to realize the organic unity of trade growth, technical progress, institutional innovation, ecological environment protection and sustainable development, we have to construct the category of “full cost” through the internalization of the transactional externality, spatial externality and temporal externality on the basis of production costs, and take “full cost” as the basis for the formation of the comparative advantage and international value.

Key words： International Trade    Circulation    Full Cost    Comparative Advantage    International Value

source:Finance & Trade Economics ,No.3,2015