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The purpose of this study is to analyse the role of preferences and technological differences between countries in determining dynamics of capital accumulation, wealth and income distribution within countries and between countries, and patterns of trade in a dynamic general equilibrium framework. The model is built by integrating Walrasian general equilibrium, neoclassical growth, and H-O international trade theories. The model is built for any number of countries and each country is composed of three production sectors and heterogeneous households. The national growth mechanism is the same as that in neoclassical growth theory. Labour and capital distributions among sectors and among countries are determined under perfect competition and free trade. The model synthesizes the well-known H-O and the Oniki-Uzawa trade models, Solow-Uzawa neoclassical growth theory, and Walrasian general equilibrium theory with Zhang's utility function. We simulated the model with three national economies and with two groups of households for each country. We identified the existence of equilibrium points and plot motion of the dynamic system. We also conducted a comparative dynamic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Heckscher-Ohlin model based on Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage maintains that countries should specialize in the production and exportation of products that they have relative factor endowments. Therefore, Nigeria has taken advantage of its favourable climatic condition to become among the largest producers and exporters of cocoa products in the world. Given that cocoa is also the topmost non-oil export product and earnings in Nigeria, this paper assesses its performance and determines the effects of external factors on production in the country. Nigeria's performance in the global cocoa market has been somewhat below expectations. Using OLS and Granger causality, the OLS regression results reveal that exports, trade openness, area harvested and domestic consumption have a positive influence on cocoa production in Nigeria. The Granger test shows that there exists bidirectional causality between the world price, trade openness and yield per hectare to cocoa production in the country. The results further confirmed a unidirectional causality running from cocoa output to exports. The government of Nigeria and trading partners should create a sound environment and some incentives to stimulate cocoa producers and exporters to increase production for export performance and revenue generation in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the post-war period, the goods composition of trade in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries has changed considerably. We analyze the evolution of comparative advantage using a detailed trade data set and a new analytical tool: the Harmonic Mass index (HM index), which enables us to identify periods of structural change. We then discuss which forces may be responsible for the main structural changes, which primarily took place in many OECD countries in the mid 1980s. The advantage of the HM analysis is that it indicates when structural breaks occur in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]