The term intra-industry trade is used to refer to a process of exchange of equivalent products that belong to the same industrial sector, an example of this can be spare parts for vehicles, office supplies, among others. This type of trade is widely used in the area of international trade, specifically in procedures that involve the import and export of goods belonging to the same industrial branch.
This type of trade is established under a series of principles, which establish that an economy must be specialized, in order to take full advantage of progressive performance. It also establishes that the goal to be achieved is not related to wanting to maintain the differences with regard to local endowments, as established in neoclassical theories. This also ensures that the States are able to specialize in controlled varieties of production in order to take advantage of the benefits that the economy of scale brings, all this without affecting the diversity of products available for their own consumption..
Intra-industry trade can be of different types, three of which stand out the most, such is the case of trade in horizontally differentiated goods, trade in homogeneous goods and trade in vertically differentiated goods. Despite the fact that most of the theories that are in charge of studying intraindustrial trade place greater emphasis on the exchange of products, it should be noted that there is currently an important market in the exchange of services.
There are those who often confuse the concept of intra-industry trade with inter-industry trade, however there are a number of characteristics that make a difference between the two. On the one hand, in inter-industrial trade, it is in charge of trading products that belong to different branches of industry and which occur between different states, while in intra-industrial trade, it is only traded between products of the same industrial sector. In addition to this, in the inter-industry, the primary objective is to achieve opportunity costs that contribute to the development of the countries, Business and industry, for this to succeed specialize in the branches where opportunity costs are low, which meant an important breakthrough in trade in goods so effectively, while the intraindustrial the goal is simply trading with products the same branch.
