Great thread, everyone. Turns out there's quite a lot of material on trades, both recent and older stuff, and for different levels.

ReneDescartes wrote on 05/06/20 at 13:56:02:

Actually any known endgame specialist should be good at making the right trades throughout the game - it comes with the territory, right? In additon to Capablanca, there is specific endgame material published on:

Smyslov (both his own Endgame Virtuoso and more recent book specifically on Rook endings)

Andersson (not only the games collection by Kaufeld and Kern, but also a series of Modern Chess endgame databases by Marin)

Karpov (Endgame Virtuoso book by Karolyi and Aplin)

Carlsen (Endgame Virtuoso book by Karolyi, plus an endgame database by Marin)

Speaking of Marin, his book Learn from the Legends must be relevant, but I must admit I've never bought or studied it. And for all of these players there is the caveat that if the topic is trades in the middlegame, a regular games collections may be more useful than endgame material, even if the material on trades isn't picked out and categorized for us.

I heard it as Fischer doesn’t have bad pieces.  He trades them off. . I do remember a Capa game where his opponent tried to trade everything in order to make a draw, and, with each trade, Capa just steadily improved his position and won the ending.   

In any event, it seems like there are a fair number of treatises that cover the topic of exchanging based on general strategic principles.  But not anything akin to Pawn Structure Chess or Chess Structures that surveys the various structures and compiles concrete advice on which particular pieces to keep/trade.  Although iirc Mauricio Flores Rios does do some of this in Chess Structures.

The book Techniques of Positional Play by Bronznik and Terekhin (it is on the Forward Chess app) has a chapter with 5 subchapters with strategic goals of exchanges. Like getting rid of pieces that cover entry squares and exchanging bishops to weaken a pawn complex.

There's a chapter on exchanging in Yusupov's Chess Lessons (=Schachunterricht), as well as in his Quality Chess series. Also in Euwe and Kramer's middlegame books.

I was wondering whether Joel Benjamin's book Liquidation on the Chess Board would also cover this. From the title it sounds like it is discussing exchanges and simplification.

I've never looked at The Chess Toolbox, but I'm aware of these other sources:

Nesis: Tactical Chess Exchanges
Nesis: Exchanging to Win in the Endgame
Mednis: From the Middlegame Into the Endgame
Aveskulov: The Art of Exchanges (Modern Chess Database; https://www.modern-chess.com/en/middlegame-databases/database=74)

I have all of these except the first-listed Nesis book. Aveskulov refers back to the Nesis books, but also points out: 
Quote:
(from the Preview).

Even though it looks like good, high-level content, one thing that's struck me about Exchanging to Win in the Endgame is how exchanging is the right decision in virtually all the positions - Nesis apparently didn't think of including counter-examples. But how are you going to learn when it's good to exchange something from material where it's always good?!

While the Mednis book seems to target (or at least encompass) a slightly lower-rated audience, both it and the Aveskulov database helpfully include chapters/examples where avoiding exchanges is correct. But then putting them in one place already gives the game away. So I've toyed with the idea of collecting all the positions from Nesis, Mednis and Aveskulov in one database and randomizing the order, to get realistic training without such obvious hints!

Actually the reality is more complex still than just going for vs avoiding exchanges - it's possible to avoid, allow, offer or force an exchange as well as choosing between several possible exchanges to avoid, allow, offer or force.

I'm sure well-known authors of training books and endgame strategy books have adressed "the problem of exchanging" as well - you could scour the works of Dvoretsky, Aagaard, Shereshevsky, Hellsten and Müller for chapters and exercises on exchanging (and note that the works of both Dvoretsky and Müller include long-running ChessCafe columns).

For instance Aagaard on "Unforcing Play" in Excelling at Chess and Dvoretsky on "the superfluous knight", a topic later taken up by Van de Oudeweetering, Bronznik/Terekhin and others. Actually chapter VI of the Bronznik/Terekhin book Techniques of Positional Play is all about "Some aspects of piece exchanges".

Finally I can't resist mentioning Igor Smirnov's hit video on the principle "To take is a mistake" - various ways exchanging or allowing an exchange can be wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-k2fRVYeFg

(P. S.: The very similarly-titled works to the Nesis books in Russian and German are supposedly written by Razuvaev and Nesis. I don't know what happened there - maybe Nesis really was the sole author all along and Batsford insisted on being transparent about that.)

LeeRoth wrote on 05/03/20 at 19:07:46:

Chris Ward in winning with the Dragon said in one of the lines black plays the Rook sac on c3 that black needs to try to avoid exchanging his final rook. I remember using his discussion of that ending to beat a 170bcf when i was graded about 110 which is why its one of all time favourite books

Your Kingdom for my horse by Andy Soltis i think talks about piece exchanges - never read it though.

I thought there was something more recent perhaps by Quality Chess....?