197. Explain clearly the following passage: “We may often, by trading with foreigners, obtain their commodities at a smaller expense of labor and capital than they cost to the foreigners themselves.”
198. Is there any essential difference between trade between country and country, and trade between county and county, or even between man and man? What is the real nature of trade in all cases?
199. Why is it necessary to make any different statement of the laws of value for foreign than for domestic products? What is the cause for the existence of any international trade?
200. How would a serious decline in the efficiency of England, as compared with other countries, in the production of manufactures affect the scale of money incomes and prices in England, and why?
201. Mr. Mill refers the value of home products to the “cost of production”; of foreign products to the “cost of acquisition.” Examine the truth of this distinction.
202. It is said that in the home market the value of commodities depends on the cost of production, in the foreign market on the cost of acquisition. Comment on this distinction.
203. Is the cost of production the regulator of international values?
204. Discuss the following statement: “International value is regulated just as inter-provincial or inter-parishional value is. Coals and [pg 651] hops are exchanged between Northumberland and Kent on absolutely the same principles as iron and wine between Lancashire and Spain.”—Ruskin, “Munera Pulveris,” p. 84.
205. What determines the value of imported commodities?
206. Why does cost of production fail to determine the value of commodities brought from a foreign country? Does it also fail in the case of commodities brought from distant parts of the same country?