Capital and Technology Movements and Economic Welfare
研究关税导致的资本流动对福利的影响，发现少量资本流入可能降低接受国福利，而技术流动的影响取决于技术进步类型。
Economists have long valued capital mobility as an aid to international efficiency. Robert Mundell has shown that, under certain conditions, the capital movement induced by tariffs on goods will substitute for trade and enable the tariff-impeded international economy to reach essentially the same equilibrium as would a completely free international economy. It will also (except possibly for the case when the optimal tariff is non-zero) benefit both countries. But if perfect, unlimited capital mobility is a good thing for the borrowing country, it does not follow, as this paper demonstrates, that any limited amount of capital mobility, however small, is a good thing. If the capital movement is due to discrepancies in returns due solely to a tariff, then a small amount of capital inflow will actually diminish welfare in the recipient country. Thus, countries which take a few cautious steps toward liberalization of capital flow may find their welfare diminished. This conclusion is related to the intuitive notion that perhaps it might not be a good idea to allow only a few foreign investors to reap high rates of return in capital-short countries. If foreign investment is allowed, enough should be allowed to depress the rate of return so that excessive profits are not taken otut of the country by a few privileged investors. On the other hand, however, this paper shows that if differences in returns are due to a technological advantage in the capital-importing country so that the country with initially high return to capital nonetheless exports the capital-intensive good, and if these differences in returns are accompanied but not caused by tariffs, then even short, hesitant steps toward liberalization of capital inflow will improve the borrowing country's welfare. This paper also shows that the home country's welfare may be improved or diminished by importing the advanced country's technology when the home country levies a tariff and pays royalties for the technology. The critical point is that a movement of technology may either increase or diminish economic welfare, depending on whether the technological progress is of the capital-saving type or of the labor-saving type in the fixed production coefficients case. In the same case, when the technological progress is Hicksian neutral, technology inflow will reduce or have no effect on the home country's economic welfare, depending on whether the foreign country's technological progress occurs in the home country's inmport-competing or export industries. Similarly, capital or technology inflow will never increase the borrowing country's welfare when the country specializes completely in a single industry. Some of these results should be modified when we treat the possibility that changes in factor prices alter factor proportions.