The insight of David Ricardo’s international trade
theory can be proved by the way he managed to capture the
economic problems of his era and by the fact that his theory is
still studied and applied in the construction of new economic
models and theories. Ricardo has accepted Adam Smith’s idea,
that the “absolute advantage” determines domestic output and
trade between countries, under the assumption of perfect
mobility of factors of production. The aim of this paper is to do
an empirical analysis of Ricardo’s model not only to test the
validity of his assumptions, but also to see what are the main
categories of goods that the European Union, the United States
and Japan export and which specialization should each of them
choose.
Keywords—Ricardian model; international trade; country
specialization, comparative advantage