ABSTRACT
Column (5) shows the trading coefficient, the relationship of trade (represented here by imports) to total production, in effect the level of self-sufficiency. In general, the smaller the country, the greater its dependence on foreign trade. The four countries of the world with the largest populations (in 1989)—China, India, the USSR and the USA-were among the most self-sufficient in the world. Indeed, before China and the USSR changed from a policy of maintaining as near self-sufficiency as possible to one of expanding foreign trade, their earlier coefficients were considerably lower than those of 1989. Hong Kong and Singapore are at the other extreme, as is Luxembourg, all three cases of small, highly urbanised and industrialised economies, entirely or heavily dependent on the outside world for their primary products. The broad features of international trade shown by the countries selected for inclusion in Table 4.2 were similar a decade and even two decades ago (see e.g. Cole 1983).
