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New France, like most European colonies in the New World, suffered from a persistent shortage of metal coins. As Quebec could only legally import from France, their standards of living were constrained by their ability to export a few primary products (mostly fur, cod, timber and wheat). Mercantilist restrictions and underdeveloped financial markets limited the ability to use the capital account to import coins and tightened the balance of payments constraint. The introduction of playing card money in New France in 1685, the first use of paper money in the West, provided a means of relaxing this constraint. It produced a substitute domestic money which allowed scarce metal coins to be used to purchase imports. The balance-of-payments constrained growth models that grew out of Thirlwall’s Law is applied to this experience, with discussions of the export constraints of Quebec’s reliance on a few primary exports (with furs being the most dominant one) with inelastic demand and facing the vagaries of changing tastes in Europe.

This paper reviews the progress report on implementation of the National Strategy for Socio-Economic Development (NSSED) during 2004 in Albania. The NSSED established a multiyear plan to combat poverty and strengthen governance. The main implication of the Integrated Planning System for the NSSED is that it will evolve into a comprehensive strategic planning framework. Its focus will accordingly shift toward medium to long-term planning, ensuring that a coherent, costed, mutually consistent sector and cross-cutting strategies are developed that serve as the policy basis for the annual Medium-Term Budget Program process.

This paper on Senegal’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper discusses the economic, social, and environmental performance of policies, the political and institutional environment, and the constraints weighing on its growth as well as the challenges to be addressed. The shortage of basic infrastructure, especially in the rural areas, is due to elevated costs and low investments. This is compounded by the high cost of individual sanitation infrastructure, the poverty of households, and the limited resources of local communities. The investment rate that sometimes reaches interesting levels remained constant at an average of around 22 percent, in real terms.

This Annual Progress Report reviews the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper and Economic and Social Plan for 2007 for Mozambique. The report presents the new simplified structure adopted in the Review of the First Half of 2007. In the international context, the evolution of the international economy is presented, which allows a visualization of the international economic conditions in which the country has implemented its economic and social policy. The activities of the environment and the science and technology sectors are also described.

Joyce Chang: I concur with Andrew Powell's conclusions on the roots and causality of the Argentine crisis. Powell points out convincingly that the scope of the crisis is clearly multidimensional. He also demonstrates that fiscal mis management and the deteriorating trend in debt dynamics, exacerbated by messy politics, provided the best forewarning of the crisis. Powell presents a thoughtful analysis of why the balance of payments and size of the current account deficit are less relevant sources of the country's crisis. I fully agree with Powell's assessment that the fiscal adjustment did not need to be so large in the first year of former president de la Rua's adminis tration. The biggest disappointment was that the government was not able to take the initial small steps necessary on the fiscal side to embark on a path of debt stabilization. I would argue that if the de la Rua government had posted a relatively modest increase in the primary surplus in 2001, bringing the pri mary surplus up to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2001 from 0.4 percent of GDP in 2000, this would likely have been sufficient to gain market credibility. By the time the de la Rua administration realized the mag nitude of the crisis and called for a zero deficit, it was too late to regain market credibility. Much larger spending cuts were necessary, in the order of 25 per cent, not the 13 percent announced. Powell references a JP Morgan research report written in 2000 (before the JP Morgan Chase merger), which illustrates that the initial fiscal adjustment necessary for Argentina was not that large, and the failure to deliver that adjust ment was a key cause of the crisis.11 would like to point out that JP Morgan's paper was revised in 2001 (postmerger) by a new research team under my

Australia's weak trade performance in manufacturing is often seen to be a significant contributor to the nation's balance of payments and external debt difficulties. The paper develops and applies a simple methodology for assessing trade competitiveness at a disaggregated industry level. The unique aspect of the approach is the attempt at incorporating existing levels, and changes in, trade performance and protection, and likely future growth in market demand. The findings provide some evidence which throws doubt on the assumption that reduced protection in manufacturing will be a substantial force in attaining the desired longer-term trade competitiveness objectives of Australian industry policy. 'The observed relationship between changes in protection and trade is weak and ambiguous at best. There has also been no sustained improvement in trade performance in manufacturing, total merchandise, or goods and services overall, since the early 1970s. Furthermore, the industry groups with high competitive advantage potential in the 1970s have not benefited from the structural readjustment accompanying reduced protection.

Bangladesh has been subject to balance of payments difficulties since its inception. The government first tried to improve this situation with traditional monetary measures but experienced disappointing results. Among other reasons, this failure can be attributed to the fact that the balance of payments problems in Bangladesh are, in general, the consequence of rigidities of demand and supply in various factor and product markets. In line with this assessment, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund persuaded Bangladesh to embark upon a medium- term, comprehensive Structural Adjustment Facility plan in the mid-1980s. This paper is a critical evaluation of this plan and Bangladesh's recent macroeconomic experiences.

This Selected Issues paper examines external developments and competitiveness in France. Over the past decade, the current account has deteriorated from a surplus of 1.2 percent of GDP in 2002 to a deficit of about 2.3 percent in 2012, as France lost ground in goods trade and services recorded just a slight increase in global market shares. The slight improvement of the trade deficit seen in 2012 may suggest a change in trend, although it is still too early to determine. Past deterioration in export performance points to competitiveness weaknesses, rooted in significant rigidities in labor and product markets.

There is abundant research work in progress on the subject of small enterprises, recognizing it as the backbone of the economy. This sector caters to the largest chunk of employment. But beyond that the small sector contributes to national economy, it prevents concentration of wealth in few hands, harnesses underutilized resources, smooth transition to higher technology, integrates working of large with the small business, (sub contracting), and contributes to major goals such as Balance of Payment stability. But this sector needs an infrastructure of support services. There are some excellent examples of benchmarks of policy initiatives by countries around the world. The purpose of this paper is to review some policies of small enterprises and to use this for designing an indigenous policy. Since Punjab is the hub of small enterprises and is leading through some successful examples of PSIC and PVTC and emergence of cities based on small industries, it was decided by the author to prepare a Punjab specific small enterprises & entrepreneurship development policy. Much of development has taken place without a law or policy directed at small enterprises. Small enterprises are put at 'a fundamental social and economic disadvantage' because of this it has been observed that policy would be fundamental requirement for growth & development of this sector, therefore, an all round view has been taken while preparing this recommendation for the Punjab Government. This paper through its research has recommended the need to bifurcate the PSIC into a Punjab Small Enterprise Development Bank and a Small Business Development Service Provider. It has also emphasized the need for a paradigm shift in education policy toward entrepreneurship education. It has recommended financial policy reforms towards the small enterprise sector lending (Training Prior to Lending). It has also emphasized the need to define small enterprises and to separate the small from the medium enterprise. And finally it has recommended the establishment of the Small Enterprise Hub.

Foreign investment refers to investments made by the residents of a country in the financial assets and production processes of another country. The effect of foreign investment, however, varies from country to country. It can affect the factor productivity of the recipient country and can also affect the balance of payments. Foreign investment provides a channel through which countries can gain access to foreign capital. It can come in two forms: foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign institutional investment (FII). Foreign direct investment involves in direct production activities and is also of a medium- to long-term nature. But foreign institutional investment is a short-term investment, mostly in the financial markets. FII, given its short-term nature, can have bidirectional causation with the returns of other domestic financial markets such as money markets, stock markets, and foreign exchange markets. Hence, understanding the determinants of FII is very important for any emerging economy as FII exerts a larger impact on the domestic financial markets in the short run and a real impact in the long run. India, being a capital scarce country, has taken many measures to attract foreign investment since the beginning of reforms in 1991. India is the second largest country in the world, with a population of over 1 billion people. As a developing country, India's economy is characterized by wage rates that are significantly lower than those in most developed countries. These two traits combine to make India a natural destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign institutional investment (FII). Until recently, however, India has attracted only a small share of global foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign institutional investment (FII), primarily due to government restrictions on foreign involvement in the economy. But beginning in 1991 and accelerating rapidly since 2000, India has liberalized its investment regulations and actively encouraged new foreign investment, a sharp reversal from decades of discouraging economic integration with the global economy.

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a survey of the development of customs-union theory from Viner to date. However, the theory must be meant at least as an aid in interpreting real-world data, some space is devoted to a summary of empirical evidence relating to the gains from European Economic Union. The theory has been confined mainly to a study of the effects of customs unions on welfare rather than, for example, on the level of economic activity, the balance of payments or the rate of inflation. These welfare gains and losses, which are the subject of the theory, may arise from a number of different sources: (1) the specialization of production according to comparative advantage which is the basis of the classical case for the gains from trade; (2) economies of scale; (3) changes in the terms of trade; (4) forced changes in efficiency because of the increased foreign competition; and (5) a change in the rate of economic growth. The theory of customs unions has been almost completely confined to an investigation of (1) above, with some slight attention to (2) and (3), (5) not being dealt with at all, while (4) is ruled out of traditional theory by the assumption that production is carried out by processes which are technically efficient. The earliest customs-union theory was largely embodied in the oral tradition, for it hardly seemed worthwhile to state it explicitly, and was an example of an attempt to produce the former sort of conclusion.

Staff Papers has, since its inception in 1950, been an important vehicle for the dissemination of research done by staff of the IMF. The paper discusses three areas in which articles published in Staff Papers up until the 1970s made major contributions to the literature in international economics. The areas covered are: first, the absorption approach and the monetary theory of the balance of payments; second, the Mundell-Fleming model; and third, foreign trade modeling. The nature of the contributions and their relationship with further developments in the respective fields are detailed.

The current stance of macroeconomic policy in Australia is designed to secure improved performance in the economy’s balance of international payments. The paper examines key aspects of this policy stance. It argues that reliance on the J-curve effect of exchange rate depreciation together with tight fiscal policy will not deliver permanently improved trade performance unless accompanied by industrial initiatives aimed at improving the economy’s structural weaknesses.

There is widespread concern about the growth of imports in the United Kingdom. British industry is said to be ‘bleeding to death’ as a result of foreign competition and calls are heard for protective measures such as import controls to save the economy. There are three elements in the case for protection. The first is that trends in Britain's foreign trade in manufactured goods have been extremely adverse and that there are no good grounds for believing that they will change spontaneously. The second is that the growth of the economy is constrained by the balance of payments and that consequently a serious and growing depression will develop throughout the 1980s which could reach catastrophic proportions towards the end of the decade when North Sea oil production declines. The third is that import controls are an effective way of coping with the problem. It is recognised that the second two elements are controversial. As it happens we disagree with both of them. However, it is generally assumed that the first element - the view that increasing import penetration will destroy British industry - is common ground and that no-one disagrees with it. Our aim in this Briefing Paper is to challenge this view. There is no doubt that import penetration (which we measure as the share of imports in GDP) has growth rapidly, especially over the past two decades. In 1960 imports amounted to 25 per cent of GDP. By 1970 this proportion had risen to 28 per cent and in 1979 it had risen to 35 per cent. However, we shall argue that the economic processes that have been responsible for this development have on the whole been poorly understood. We reject the popular view that Britain is structurally unable to compete in world markets. Instead we propose an alternative interpretation of import penetration which explains UK trade performance in terms of the broader pattern of the world trade order. In the light of this theory we argue that import penetration in the UK is not an inexorable trend reflecting the relative weakness of the UK in international trade. On the contrary, UK import penetration has been adjusting to a new world trading environment and now that this process of adjustment is nearing completion the rate of increase of import penetration seems likely to abate. Moreover, the British people have benefited from this greater degree of free trade and any protective measures designed to inhibit the economic forces that we describe below would damage the economic welfare of the British public as a whole.

Britain fought two battles for survival during the Second World War: one was the conventional military struggle, the other was an economic one. The damage suffered by the British economy because of the war was enormous. Many of the destructive elements are well known but there were also less obvious ways in which the country's future economic prospects were damaged. Britain liquidated over $1.5 billion of her overseas assets for the war effort during 1940-I, thus losing future revenue which would have helped with her postwar balance of payments difficulties. By December 1940 her reserves were virtually exhausted and she was accumulating new liabilities at a frightening rate. In December 1941 they stood at $3 billion.2 Such depletions of, and burdens upon the economy were difficult enough to countenance in themselves, but when combined with the changes the war wrought upon Britain's international trade then the economic outlook became almost unbearably bleak. Britain's export trade declined by over 50 per cent during the war. For a nation whose prosperity, indeed very existence, depended upon trade this was a disaster of gigantic proportions. The British Government's main obsession during the war, military issues apart, was with Britain's prospective postwar balance of payments problem. This article is not concerned with how this was eventually solved, but with one aspect of how it came about: the Export, or Eden, White Paper of Io September 1941.3

It was amazing to compile a list of financial and related problem areas as great as any presented at one single time in our history as the substance of my introductory remarks, and find that they had to be altered somewhere possibly between 90 and 180 degrees from what they were two and four days before the date of the International Monetary Conditions Seminar-sponsored by the New York Society of Security Analysts on April 4, 1968-and indeed needed substantial revision by the tragic event elsewhere of the day itself. These extremely difficult questions facing the business and security analyst today-which are so ably analyzed in Dr. O'Leary's article in this issue of the Journal, were the focal points of the seminar. That is, the problems, among others, of

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the total inadequacy of keynesian balance of payments theory, or rather that of Walras' law. Walras' Law, as interpreted and formulated by its principal exponents, Lange and Patinkin is an illegitimate extension of the budget constraints in Walras' grandiose scheme for the simultaneous determination of prices and quantities of commodities through the fictitious process of tatonnement by a superhuman auctioneer. Walras never formulated such a law. He was the first one to object to its application to the supply and demand for money. The simultaneous settlement of the demand and supply equations for all goods through the effort of an auctioneer is only an expedient theoretical device of his to avoid the indeterminancy of the final equilibrium that would result from the indeterminable paths of trading at nonequilibrium prices before final equilibrium is approached. It is certainly not meant to be a faithful description of the real world. At best, it is a crude first attempt to simulate the real world.

Mr Brittan said this should be an interesting session following the discussion of the papers by Professor Cooper and Mr Lamfalussy, though there would now be more emphasis on short-run issues. It was the difficulties of the American balance of payments which had to be discussed this afternoon.

Publisher Summary The Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua) have confronted acute and mounting problems in all aspects of their political, social, economic, and institutional development. These problems have been of such a nature and intensity that they have captured world attention. Several assistance programs for the region have been announced, and all these are designed to implement a system of preferential trade and foreign aid for the entire Caribbean Basin, including the Central American subregion. This chapter describes the problems of economic growth and external indebtedness in Central America. The gradual decline of the Central American economy finds expression in three aspects, all of which contribute to the rapid increase in the region's indebtedness: (1) the growing balance of payments deficits since 1970, (2) the outcome and subsequent increases in fiscal deficits, and (c) the internal credit expansion, particularly that portion within the composition of the money supply that corresponds to the public sector expenditure.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses selective credit controls in underdeveloped economies. Selective credit controls are intended to encourage or discourage specific types of investment and expenditure by influencing the lending policy of banks and similar credit institutions. In evaluating the usefulness of these controls and of the different techniques for selectiveness, it is necessary first to define the basic objectives to be fulfilled. A policy of selective credit control may be adopted, for example, as an adjunct to a well-balanced development program. Selective credit control may be adopted less as a long-term objective than in response to some short-term difficulties, for example, during a period of active inflation. It is at present generally recognized that inflation creates balance of payments difficulties and encourages too much unproductive investment in inventories, luxury construction, etc. The introduction of selective credit controls in many Latin American countries in recent years has been motivated largely by the desire to minimize these adverse consequences of inflation. The reasons for adopting a policy of selective credit control during a period of active inflation, however, need careful consideration.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the monetary theoretic foundation of the modern monetary approach to the balance of payments. The monetary approach to the balance of payments began with Hume's price-specie-flow mechanism, as most proponents of the modern version of this approach are quick to point out. However, in the heyday of the Keynesian Revolution, this mechanism had come to be regarded as inoperative, as the quantity of money itself was regarded by the prevailing monetary theory as a matter of no consequence. The balance of payments theory developed in those days naturally tended to neglect the influence of money supply. This chapter discusses the demand for money function and the Walras' law relation to the excess demand for or supply of money. Walras' Law applies strictly only to simultaneous settlement of all the exchange transactions on all markets at a single set of prices. Under such strict conditions, the constaint that, for every participant in the exchange process, the value of goods he receives must be identically equal to the value of goods he offers in exchange for them can be expected to imply the so-called Walras' Law relation.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the exchange rate as an instrument of policy in a developing country. It is concerned with the real effects of exchange rate changes. It is argued, using an essentially monetarist framework, that in a situation in which (1) a devaluation is allowed to be an effective tax on real money balances, (2) the country is a price taker in world markets, (3) domestic producers use imported inputs in conjunction with domestic inputs, (4) there are significant costs of moving nonlabor factor resources from one sector to another during some short-run period, a devaluation will have short-run balance of payments and relative price effects. This in turn will induce wealth effects that will have long-run consequences for the structure of the economy. Because of comparative advantage, different structures in regard to output and techniques may have different consequences for the growth of the economy.

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a panoramic, albeit very general, and preliminary view of the complex interrelationships existing between the changes and composition of the external debt in developing areas, particularly in Latin American nations, and other key operating variables and fundamental economic processes underway in these countries. The descriptive data used throughout this work has been selected from the customary official sources, mainly the latest available reports from international organizations that are standard in this kind of investigation. The chapter reviews the problems and difficulties that must be considered in seeking realistic and satisfactory solutions to the situation of the external debt and its servicing in Latin America. The evolution of the balance of payments in Latin America during the 1970s is marked by the appearance of uncharacteristic negative merchandise trade balances. It has also displayed large fluctuations, a steadily increasing negative service balance, and, as a result, a massive deficit on current account. These tendencies were offset by increasing capital flows to the region which, in turn, led to the rapid expansion of external debt.

Publisher Summary Despite the drawbacks present for entrepreneurs and sub-contracting, international sub-contracting (ISC) arrangements are generally considered—according to a traditional approach—as an effective means of accelerating industrial development, as they foster a certain complementarity of production lines on the basis of a specialization that reflects comparative advantages, because they increase the rate of utilization of productive capacities, because they have positive effects on the balance of payments of the LDCs, and especially because they allow a mobilization and better utilization of the manpower resources of LDCs. The development of international sub-contracting should contribute to the dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge to the less-developed countries. Work done by sub-contractors has to conform to strict technical specification, and if goods, regardless of their origin, are to be of uniform quality, technological standardization is necessary.

Dr Marquez believed that a contrast between the Hungarian and Latin American experiences in foreign trade could be instructive for both. Hungary seemed to face an easier balance of payments situation than most Latin American countries, whose development was so dependent on their capacity to import. But there were close parallels in the need to diversify exports and in the growing scepticism towards national import-substitution policies. Scope for the latter was limited in small countries, and the protection which it necessitated distorted the price system. He suggested that the solution might lie in import substitution and economic integration at the regional level, which would allow efficient, large-scale production. In this regional context, countries of relatively low levels of development should not necessarily be favoured by allowing them to reduce their tariffs more slowly than other countries, as is the case in Latin America, because this could perpetuate an irrational pattern of protection. Rather, they should receive capital inflows from other countries in the region, in order to enable them to develop production for export to these countries.

When Labour came to power in October 1964, the British defence and foreign policy remained unchanged. However, within three years, Prime Minister Wilson had announced the military withdrawal from Singapore. In the Defence White Paper of July 1967 this was planned for the mid-seventies, but in January 1968 the date was moved forward to the end of 1971. This was only marginally altered by the Conserva tive policy to station some troops in Singapore under the Five-Power Defence Arrangement. This decision brought to an end the imperial presence in Southeast Asia which had lasted 150 years, representing a major break in defence and foreign policy. The Anglo-Malaysian Defence Agreement was the last British commitment to assist automatically another country in its defence. Secretary of State for Defence, Healey, talked of "the great est transformation of defence policy in the history of Britain' * and Gor don Walker called the withdrawal a "revolution in Britain's defence posture" and an "epoch-making and revolutionary decision".1 In the discussion about the decision-making process of the with drawal, too much emphasis seems generally to be laid upon eco nomics.2 The economic situation was alarming indeed; enormous balance of payments deficits which were to a great extent caused by the military expenditure overseas, appeared regularly in the 1960s. Other factors also influenced the decision-making. The international con text, that is, the first signs of detente, the end of confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia, London's approach and formal application to enter the EEC, and so forth, played a role. The press, especially the Guardian after mid-1965, and informed opinion ? the elitist discus sion among academics, senior civil servants, and officers ? also had a bearing upon this process. In addition there were strong factions in all three parliamentary parties which favoured a military withdrawal from east of Suez.3

Although capital inflows are generally beneficial to recipient countries, they also pose a challenge for the conduct of economic policy. This paper proposes a conceptual taxonomy to guide the design of policy responses in the face of capital flows. We explore how responses to capital surges should be differentiated based on the source of balance of payments pressures. We also examine whether the policy choices in emerging market countries conform to the taxonomy's predictions and find some correspondence, especially during periods of high global liquidity.

This paper examines the consideration of the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe’s debt relief at the completion point under the enhanced Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and Debt Relief under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative. Lower-than-projected export receipts largely owing to drought conditions and lower-than-expected tourism receipts, changes in cross-currency exchange rates, and variations in discount rates have been all unambiguously exogenous and outside the control of the authorities. There is need for continued fiscal prudence, policies to support broad-based growth and export diversification, continued donor support, and prudent debt management.

Economic developments are broadly in line with the original program projections for the year. The authorities have made considerable progress in implementing the IMF staff-monitored program (SMP), and the program is broadly on track. Substantial efforts to improve revenue administration raised revenue by 18 percent in February-June 2006, compared with the corresponding period in 2005. The financial position of the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL) also improved. Serious capacity constraints also affect the ability of the authorities to achieve all of the objectives.

The purpose of this short paper is to describe briefly the peculiar pattern of Thailand's economic growth during the last 15 years. The paper will be divided into three parts. The first part will briefly describe the pattern of Thailand's economic development from 1956 to 1970. The second part will show the impact of this particular pattern of development on Thailand's balance of payments. The third part will suggest some other possible effects of this development pattern.

IN the course of 1964 there developed a new and plainly perceptible plateau in foreign aid. The upward trend of recent years in help for the economic development of the poorer countries came to an end and began to flatten out. In most of the richer, industrialised countries, aid programmes came up against political resistance and experienced a mild set-back. This aid plateau was less immediately apparent in Britain than elsewhere. The sincere and earnest concern among the rank and file of the Labour Party for the problem of world poverty led the new Labour Government to take steps that seemed to point towards increased, and not diminished, emphasis on the foreign aid programme. A new Ministry of Overseas Development was set up, and Mrs. Barbara Castle -an old Bevanite and a favourite of long standing in party executive elections-was chosen to head it, with Cabinet rank. British contributions to the United Nations Special Fund and Technical Assistance funds, it was announced, would be increased. Yet the White Paper,' produced in August 1965, carefully avoided any commitment about the total volume of future British aid. The costs of its new measures were all minor, and all in sterling. Significantly, British aid which had risen 100 per cent. in the last four years of the fifties, rose only 25 per cent. in the first four years of the sixties. Already there has been a decrease since 1963 in British loans to developing countries outside the Commonwealth. But in the figure for total British aid this is disguised by a sudden jump in loans to independent Commonwealth countries-a jump partly balanced by a corresponding fall in bilateral aid to the (shrinking) dependent territories. The rather uneven pattern of British aid suggests that the deciding factor in the past has been the need to award golden handshakes to departing colonies, and that, in the future, the overriding concern to protect the balance of payments will tighten the tap still more. Meanwhile, President Johnson's foreign aid programme for 1965, it will be recalled, was the lowest requested of Congress since 1948-less than half the size of the 1951, 1952 or 1953 programmes. France, too, has put a ceiling on aid to her client-states in Africa, and on the

This chapter highlights the operation of the monetary policy in UK since 1945. It was felt that economic fluctuation reflected changes in the amount of or the availability of money. One of the problems to be tackled by the new Government was the inflationary boom caused by the Korean War, a boom that expressed itself also in the balance of payments. Variations in the supply of money had virtually no effect upon spending, principally because there were so many near-money substitutes. The money supply was set aside as a target; the wider liquidity was almost impossible to define and thus could not be operated upon but control of credit received a new lease of life. Clearing banks are the retail end of the business and need to keep cash for the convenience of customers. In March 1980 a Green Paper was published as a discussion document to air the problems of improving short-term monetary control. In the UK a reassessment of the place of monetary policy was hastened by balance of payments difficulties.

During the years immediately prior to Britain’s accession to the European Community, considerable attention was devoted to the likely effects of membership upon the British economy. Despite the controversy generated in the debate over membership, a substantial degree of consensus emerged as to the probable economic impact. It was clear, for example, that budgetary contributions and higher food prices would involve a substantial outflow on the balance of payments and would boost the rate of inflation during the transition period. The impact on the industrial sector was less clear-cut. It was generally considered that the effect of the elimination of tariffs between Britain and the EEC combined with a loss of Commonwealth, EFTA and Irish preferences would result initially in an adverse movement in the balance of trade in manufactures. The 1970 White Paper, Britain and the European Communities, An Economic Assessment, estimated an adverse movement in the non-food trade balance of between £125 million and £275 million With higher import prices for food and the large net budget contributions, an adverse movement in the balance of payments of up to £1000 million was foreseen.

In January 1966 the Government outlined in a White Paper proposals to establish an Industrial Reorganisation Corporation (I.R.C.). The Government argued that the need to improve the balance of payments made it essential to strengthen the competitive position of British industry; that In some sectors the typical company in Britain is too small to achieve long production runs; to take advantage of economics of scale; to undertake effective research and development; to support specialist departments for design and marketing; to install the most modern equipment or to attract the best qualified management. Moreover, large groups may often have been built up haphazardly or solely to achieve wide diversification and may not therefore be organised to secure full efficiency in current conditions.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a sudden funding squeeze manifested in major disruptions in international capital flows, the most dramatic of the wave of extreme capital flow episodes since the global financial crisis (GFC). This paper contributes to efforts to better understand this extreme episode in the context of post-GFC structural financial changes. To do so, it presents a new monthly dataset of gross capital flows for 41 countries, better suited to the identification of sudden shocks than quarterly Balance of Payments data. Leveraging on this dataset, the paper first develops a more precise identification of extreme capital flow episodes since the GFC and revisit their drivers, asking whether COVID-19 episode significantly changed recent findings of the weaker role of global factors. The answer is no. Rather, the role of global factors may have further lost explanatory power in the post-GFC period including COVID. On the other hand, pull factors such as pre-COVID vulnerabilities and country-specific and pandemic-specific factors appear key to explaining the identified cross-country heterogeneity.

V yICISSITUDE and catastrophe have been of fairly frequent occurrence in the world sugar industry, whose history has seen many remarkable fluctuations of fortune. Indonesia, successor to the Netherlands Indies, has been a sugar producer of the first importance for a considerable time, a low cost producer whose efficiency made it a strong competitor in the contracting "free" market of the interwar period. But not even its efficiency could protect it from the Great Depression, the planted area of estate cane falling catastrophically from 200,000 hectares in 1931 to 27,600 in 1935. By 1939 the planted area had climbed again to 94,900 hectares; then in the Second World War, Indonesia, the second largest cane sugar exporter in the world, was eliminated, together with a large part of the European beet industry, and the way was open for the enormous expansion of cane sugar production in the western hemisphere, an expansion which continued in most producing countries of that part of the world until 1953. In this post-war phase of expansion Indonesia was denied a part, for what remained of the sugar industry after the Japanese occupation was largely destroyed in the struggle for independence in 1948 to 1949. Though the time is long distant when sugar provided almost a quarter of the export income, as it did before 1930, the destruction of the sugar industry would have been a heavy blow to the new Republic had it not been for the boom in rubber prices with the outbreak of the Korean War. In the period between the post Korean drop in prices and the great resurgence of American business activity in the latter half of 1954, a period during which rubber never rose above 22-24 cents a pound, the real nature of Indonesia's economic position became obvious. For a country with problems of development as great as those anywhere in Asia, and faced with chronic balance of payments difficulties, the resuscitation of the sugar industry, which had exported well over a million tons of sugar annually before the war and contributed almost 7 per cent of the export income, was an obvious and desirable course of action. Moreover, though cane is grown in almost every part of Indonesia, the sugar industry is confined to Java, an island which, while absorbing the greater part of the national income, earns only about one quarter of the foreign exchange; Java needs to expand its foreign earnings to help refute the charge which is frequently made in the other islands that it is a parasite which is appropriating the national resources for its own exclusive benefit. The Indonesian Government, however, has taken little positive action itself to assist the recovery of the sugar industry. The difficulties confronting the reestablishment of the industry after 1949

This paper documents the compilation of a 2017 Social Accounting Matrix for Myanmar. This is based on partial and unpublished National Accounts data and unpublished Supply and Use Table data, as well as Balance of Payment data and Government Finance Statistics data. It provides a detailed representation of the Myanmar economy and identifies 43 activities and 43 commodities. Labour is disaggregated by educational attainment level or by occupation group using a Labour Force Survey, while household income and expenditure detail is extracted from the Myanmar Living Conditions Survey.

This essay deals with the EMS experience and its failure, with the Maastricht Treaty, and with the interregnum leading to the formation of the EMU in 1999. The paper highlights the position of German authorities, showing that they were quite lucid about the fundamental weaknesses inherent in a process that separated monetary from fiscal policies by giving priority to the centralization of the former. Instead of repeating the well known critiques leveled against the EMU – for which readers are referred to the unsurpassed treatment by Stiglitz, the essay highlights the splintering of Europe in the way in which it has unfolded during the 1990s and in the first decade of the present millennium. In particular the early economic and political origins of the terminal crisis of Italy are located between the late 1980s and the 1990s. France is shown to belong increasingly to the so-called European periphery by virtue of a weakening industrial structure and persistent balance of payments deficits. The paper argues that France regains its central role by political means and through its weight as an active nuclear military power centered on maintaining its imperial interests and posture especially in Africa. The first decade of the present millennium is portrayed as the period in which a distinct German economic area had been formed in the midst of Europe with a strong drive to the east with an increasingly powerful gravitational pull towards the People’s Republic of China.

This paper looks empirically at some economic effects of volatile exchange rates and financial conditions and examines policy responses for managing such volatility. It also sheds light on some economic costs that stem from volatile capital flows and exchange rates and analyzes how countries deploy their policy toolkits in response. The data-driven analysis should contribute to ongoing reflections about how to manage volatile capital flows and exchange rates both in Asian EMEs and more broadly.

This paper documents the compilation of a Pre-Prototype 2015 Social Accounting Matrix for Myanmar and provides an overview of key economic structural features of this emerging economy in a challenging process of transition. We built this Social Accounting Matrix using National Accounts and Supply and Use Table data as well as Balance of Payment data for the 2014-15 fiscal year together with Government Budget Statistics from the 2017 Statistical Yearbook. It provides a detailed representation of the Myanmar economy and identifies 43 activities and 43 commodities.

This paper documents the construction of a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Zimbabwe in 2013. The SAM was built using National Accounts data from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT), including balance of payment data, government finance data, and highly aggregated industry-level production accounts.Detailed data on industry and service sectors were obtained from ZIMSTAT surveys. For some activities, unpublished but recent supply and use data on disaggregated industries were combined with data from older sources. These sources include a 2011/12 ZIMSTAT household survey, trade data, the Central Government Budget, and output and price data from private farming organizations.The SAM provides a detailed representation of Zimbabwe’s economy with 36 activities and 48 commodities. The SAM disaggregates labour into skilled and unskilled labour and separates households into rural and urban households. Despite shortcomings in the underlying data, it is hoped that this initial attempt at constructing a SAM representing the economy of Zimbabwe after land reform will stimulate further work aimed at improving it. 2013 Social Accounting Matrix for Zimbabwe

This paper demonstrates that the measured stock of China's holding of U.S. assets could be much higher than indicated by the U.S. net international investment position data due to unrecorded historical Chinese in ows into an increasingly popular global safe haven asset: U.S. residential real estate. We first use aggregate capital ows data to show that the increase in unrecorded capital in ows in the U.S. balance of payment accounts over the past decade is mainly linked to in ows from China into U.S. housing markets. Then, using a unique web traffic dataset that provides a direct measure of Chinese demand for U.S. housing at the zip code level, we estimate via a difference-in-difference matching framework that house prices in major U.S. cities that are highly exposed to demand from China have on average grown 7 percentage points faster than similar neighborhoods with low exposure over the period 2010-2016. These average excess price growth gaps co-move closely with macro-level measures of U.S. capital in ows from China, and tend to widen following periods of economic stress in China, suggesting that Chinese households view U.S. housing as a safe haven asset.

This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between perceived corruption and foreign direct investment (FDI) in Egypt during the period 1970–2019. Using a novel back-casting methodology, it extrapolates perceived corruption time series between 1970 and 1980. The results of the Johansen cointegration technique and the multivariate vector error correction model show a positive relationship between perceived corruption and FDI, supporting the “greasing the wheels” effect of corruption. This positive association can be explained by several factors, such as the cross-interdependence of rent-generating assets with perceived corruption and FDI, and the use of FDI data based on the balance of payments that has growing financial-flows and phantom-FDI components. The findings of this paper have important policy implications. Improving the fundamental governance structure in Egypt should be accompanied by a comprehensive investment facilitation strategy to compensate for the removal of “grease” from the “wheels”.

PurposeThis study explored the impact of COVID-19 on the petroleum sector in Egypt, both economically and socially. Of all sectors of the economy, the oil industry has been one of the most negatively impacted by the pandemic, with oil prices plummeting at the start of the pandemic. Use to decrease demand. This paper aimed to analyse the main economic and social effects of the pandemic on the Egypt oil industry through an examination of the macroeconomic data reflected in the Egyptian balance of payments, the country's general budget and the oil industry's performance data. The study also conducted a survey of a set of workers from the Egyptian petroleum sector. The study thus concluded two levels of analysis; a macrolevel and a micro level analysis of the effect of COVID-19 on the Egyptian oil industry.Design/methodology/approachThe paper builds upon the experience gained from evaluating market change caused by COVID-19 (Agosta et al., 2020), to analyse the socioeconomic implications of COVID-19 on the Egyptian oil industry. This study employed a survey analysis of questionnaires filled by on a sample of workers in the petroleum sector in Egypt. Data were analysed using the SPSS software, version 18.0. Descriptive analysis was reported as frequencies and percentages. The macroeconomic impact analysis was done by analysing macro-economic data pertaining the oil industry's levels of production as well as the data pertaining to Egypt's external balance of payment and public finance.FindingsThe paper concludes that although the COVID-19 pandemic had negatively impacted the socioeconomics of oil sector workers, reducing their incomes and costing them jobs, these effects appeared to be short term effects that could be minimised with the end of the pandemic and be mitigated through the adequate social and economic policies. No permanent socioeconomic losses were thus deemed to be a serious concern with respect to these workers. The study also concluded that, macroeconomically, lower global oil prices has had a net positive effect on the Egyptian economy as the causing an expected shrinkage of the overall trade deficit. It also has reduced the national budget deficit and has helped mobilise money into the economy, financing both investments and social expenses.Research limitations/implicationsThe survey was very hard to reach, where lot of workers in the petroleum sector (governmental) refused to answer the questions.Practical implicationsSome African countries may not have all the necessary most recent data of economic indicators needed to ascertain with certainty the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, at the event that data are completely available, analysts must consider that any worsening of the economy may not stem directly from the pandemic itself. Causality has to be clearly established. The survey therefore focused on the attitudes and perceptions of oil sector workers, irrespective of whether a given indicator had been affected by the pandemic or is seen likely to be affected by it in the future. All those responding have reported the belief that economic indicators, such as GDP growth, inflation and trade had been impacted negatively by the spread of COVID-19. They also believed the effects of the pandemic on transport to have had direct effects on the oil industry.Social implicationsThe social impact of the pandemic was less apparent, particularly among governmental sector workers compared with those in the private sector. However, freelancers have reported some issues that may be become more apparent through aggregated data.Originality/valueThis study has presented some preliminary estimates of the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on petroleum sector in Egypt. The goal was not to be definitive about the virus outbreak, but rather to provide information about a range of possible economic costs of the disease. While, a detailed quantification of the socioeconomic impact of the coronavirus pandemic may not be feasible, it is still useful to identify possible transmission channels through which the pandemic may affect the Egypt economy and society. It is also useful to identify key issues that are likely shape short- and medium-term socioeconomic prospects in Egypt as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in Egypt.

Foreign direct investment are the net inflows of investment to acquire a lasting management interest which is 10 percent or more of voting stock in an enterprise operating in an economy other than the investor. It is the sum of equity capital, reinvestment of earnings, other long-term capital, and short-term capital as shown in the balance of payments. This paper will discuss the definitions and findings of previous studies regarding Foreign Direct Investment. This paper also will explain about forecasting techniques used in previous studies in forecasting Foreign Direct Investment. Time Series Analysis is used to determine a good model that can be used to forecast business metrics.

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to make a descriptive exploratory effort to discern the role of IT exports in India's macro-economic indicators, like national income, employment and balance of payment in the post-Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization strategy in the 1990s. The paper also explores the vital historical developments of various dimensions of IT, such as its export growth, major software and services exports destinations, compositions of IT exports and domestic growth in India.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on secondary data, which were collected from Balance of Payment Statistics Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy, National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM),rtd and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY). This study has used descriptive analysis and growth models for studying the objectives. Major IT sector dimensions, such as total output, exports revenue, domestic revenue, gross domestic product, employment and exports of the software and service industry, have been examined for the period 1991–2016.FindingsThe findings suggest that over the last 26 years, the information technology industry's economic footprint has extended by more than seven times. Over the same period, direct employment in the information technology sector increased at an average growth rate of around 17%. Software and services exports earn, on average, about three times greater than the other three major services of India's current account of the balance of payment.Originality/valueThis study focuses on originality in examining the role of IT exports in India's macro-economic indicators economic reforms of the 1990s and also explores the historical developments of various dimensions of IT exports and domestic growth in India. All the work has been done in original by the authors, and the work used has been acknowledged properly.