Critical review of the classic postulates of international trade: An empirical exercise involving Colombia and Peru

Abstract

This article presents a summarized review and a criticism of the principle classic postulates of international trade, based on the ideas of Smith (1776) and Ricardo (1817). The conflicts of the case are described in relation to the difficulty of empirically validating the theoretical-conceptual assumptions and, at the same time, a simple empirical validation exercise is conducted, as found in an introductory course on international economics. The article uses two supposedly "close" countries as reference points-Colombia and Peru-and examines various goods whose production, trade and consumption appear on the surface to be particularly homogenous: oil, gold, chicken meat and oranges.