his reply to our empirical note, Bowen [1985, pp. 353, 354] argues that "In summary, the validity of my proposed index measures of comparative advantage cannot be judged solely on the finding that the assumption of identical and homothetic preferences across countries is violated .... (because) any index based on the NCA norm is a biased measure of a country's true specialization. Thus, what needs to be determined is the relative bias among the indices implied by alternative NCA worlds". This rationale is somewhat surprising in view of the fact that it is essentially the assumption of identical homothetic preferences (IHP) which together with equal commodity prices across countries determines the "norm" in Bowen's index measures1. Avoiding the use of the IHP assumption, we would like to suggest a modification of Bowen's indices which is likely to improve the approximation to the "true" measure of specialization II, as defined in Bowen [1985]. In addition to his constructive critique, a few remarks will be made on obvious conceptual and terminological problems related to the issue of "revealing" comparative advantage. We base our discussion of the biasedness of indices on a variation of the Figure in Bowen [1985, p. 352] which is consistent with our empirical results. Our Figure depicts pre-trade production = consumption for countries 1 and 2 at points Zl and Z2, respectively. Assuming homogeneous demand functions and constant relative prices, the vectors El and E2 are the consumption vectors for alternative levels of income for the two countries. Note that Zl and Z2 are based on pre-trade assumptions and, therefore, can not be observed. With trade, the countries specialize to produce at Al and A2 and consume at Cl and C2, with Al, A2, Cl and C2 all being observed in post-trade equilibrium. Through vector addition we can observe world production (Aw=Al+A2) and world consumption (Cw=Cl+C2), which are equal. Also note that Cl and C2 are carefully positioned off the vectors El and E2 to incorporate the substitution effect due to world prices being different from domestic autarkic prices2. Thus, Ci and Ai lie on opposite sides