Performing comparative advantage: The case of the global coffee business

Arbeitspapier

We posit that comparative advantage is discovered via alternative transactional regimes of trading. Transactional regimes are performative, based on different forms of embedded agency. The theory is applied on a study of Brazilian coffee business which manifests the increasing importance of specialty coffee. Innovations in the transactional regime have created new forms of agency which triggered new ways to produce coffee and to activate the hidden potential of variety in consumer tastes. Comparative advantage, though still driven by endowments with natural resources, relates with very different product characteristics and forms of market organization. This constitutes the performativity of comparative advantage.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Frankfurt School - Working Paper Series ; No. 167

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Current Heterodox Approaches: Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary ; Trade: General ; Empirical Studies of Trade ; Economic Development: General
• Subject: comparative advantage ; trading ; transactional regimes ; performativity ; coffee

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Andriani, Pierpaolo ; Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
• (where): Frankfurt a. M.
• (when): 2011

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/48656
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET