Proceedings of 8th Annual London Business Research Conference
Imperial College, London, UK, 8 - 9 July, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-922069-28-3
On Competitive and Comparative Advantage
Bernard C. Beaudreau
The field of international business/economics is largely dualistic in nature. On
the one hand is the economics literature which has, for the most part, focused
on the notion of comparative advantage (technology, factor proportions) while
on the other hand is the business literature which has focused on competitive
advantage. Over the years, there have been a few attempts at integrating the
two (Neary 2004). This paper presents an alternative approach based on global
value chain/supply chain analysis and the concept of vertical comparative
advantage (Beaudreau 2011). Accordingly, competitive and comparative advantage are compared and contrasted at the individual \link level.
Keywords: Comparative Advantage, Competitive Advantage, OECD-WTO Trade in
Value Added Data
JEL Codes: D24, L60, O3, O4.
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Department of Economics, Universite Laval, Quebec, G1K 7P4, Canada.
Email: bernard.beaudreau@ecn.ulaval.ca