Raymond Vernon was part of the team that overlooked the Marshall plan, the US investment plan to rejuvenate Western European economies after the Second World War. He played a central role in the post-world war development of the IMF and GATT organisations. He became a professor at Harvard Business School from 1959 to 1981 and continued his career at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
The intent of his International Product Life Cycle model (IPLC) was to advance trade theory beyond David Ricardo’s static framework of comparative advantages. In 1817, Ricardo came up with a simple economic experiment to explain the benefits to any country that was engaged in international trade even if it could produce all products at the lowest cost and would seem to have no need to trade with foreign partners. He showed that it was advantageous for a country with an absolute advantage in all product categories to trade and allow its work force to specialise in those categories with the highest added value. Vernon focused on the dynamics of comparative advantage and drew inspiration from the product life cycle to explain how trade patterns change over time. I. Description
The product life-cycle theory is an economic theory that was developed by Raymond Vernon in response to the failure of the Heckscher-Ohlin model to explain the observed pattern ofinternational trade. The theory suggests that early in a product's life-cycle all the parts and labor associated with that product come from the area in which it was invented. After the product becomes adopted and used in the world markets, production gradually moves away from the point of origin. In