Abstract
Equity issues are fundamental to the formation of international economic policy. As illustrated by the Corn Laws in nineteenth-century Britain, who gains and who loses from trade policy is a central question. Yet, in this century, these issues have tended to fall from view in the economics literature. For example, the word “equity” appears in the index to Paul Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld’s undergraduate textbook International Economics (1994) only in the form of “equity finance.” The recent revival of interest in distributional problems is therefore to be welcomed. The focus has, however, been a rather limited one, being primarily concerned with the impact on wages of increased North-South trade.
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