Barone's 1908 representation of an economy's trade equilibrium and the gains from trade

Abstract

John Chipman's 1965 ‘Survey of the theory of international trade’ implied that Enrico Barone arrived in 1920–23 at an analytical representation of an economy's trading equilibrium. In fact, the latter appeared in a long footnote (here translated) found in the original 1908 edition of Barone's Principi di Economia Politica. The three diagrams accompanying it completely represent an economy's equilibrium in autarky and in trade, and its gains from trade. Thus, Barone can claim precedence (by over twenty years) over Haberler, Lerner, Leontief and Viner as the originator of the neoclassical model of an open trading economy and its diagrammatic representation.