Search

In view of the unsettled condition of European industry and finance, of the depreciated and fluctuating exchanges, and of the enormously heavy tax burdens, existing or prospective, pressure for prompt payment of either principal or interest at any early date would be most unwise. But eventual payment under a generously elastic funding arrangement is both possible and probable. The burden of settling for past wars will be less irksome than that of earlier days devoted to preparation for future wars, and the disturbance to the international money markets and exchange long since stabilized will be inconsiderable. Though advocating the cancellation of this foreign indebtedness, It should, however be a endeavor to make it at the same time an instrument of reform. It might fairly be required, in return for a gradual and progressive cancellation of these debts, that the debtor nations balance their budgets, that they stop the further emission of paper money and that they apply their resources to economic purposes rather than to armament.

The article presents a discussion related to business cycle written by Milton Gilbert and a reference to the paper written on the same topic by Jacques J. Polak and Rudolf R. Rhomberg. Europe has had only two recessions since the war, one in 1952 and one in 1958, contrasted with the four that the U.S. has had. The 1952 recession was due mainly to restraints exercised by the policy-making authorities for the purpose of correcting balance-of-payments difficulties, although the reaction from the Korean boom was also a factor, it was secondary. The 1958 recession was also due to policy restraints exerted during the three years from 1955 to 1957. These restraints were applied mostly to correct excess demand, overfull employment, and inflationary pressures, although balance-of-payments difficulties were a factor in some or most cases. Thus the only recessions resulted from policy measures, taken deliberately. The recessions also were ended by policy management. Restraints were relaxed when the authorities considered that expansion could be safely resumed. And it did resume.

The article presents information about bibliographies, periodicals giving news items and special reports in regard to the readjustment and reconstruction of the economic life of the countries of Europe. Some of the bibliographies are, "Reconstruction: A Preliminary Bibliography," compiled by Laura A. Thompson, "List of References on Reconstruction," prepared by Mrs. V. B. Turner, and is to be found in the December, 1918, issue of the journal "Monthly Labor Review." The Library of Congress published in November, 1918, "A List of British Parliamentary Publications on Reconstruction, With Some Other Publications." The Council of National Defense has prepared a "Bibliography on Reconstruction: British Parliamentary Papers and Selected Publications on Reconstruction." A very useful summary of news is contained in the "Daily Digest of Reconstruction News", published by the Director's Office of the Council of National Defense, Washington. It gives important facts about the work of the departments of the federal government in the field of reconstruction, actions of the state and municipal governments, and of foreign governments.

The progress of European recovery has been anything but steady since the winter of 1946-1947. It moved forward rapidly in 1948 and the very beginning of 1949, but the U.S. recession in the summer of 1949 set Europe back sharply. Indexes of production were stagnant or declining in most of Europe during that summer. It looked as if what was originally conceived as a largely physical task of expanding agricultural and industrial production had already, at a much earlier stage than anticipated, encountered the problem of inadequate markets for the output that could be produced. The setback was climaxed by the devaluation of sterling in September and devaluations of practically all other European currencies that followed immediately in its wake. This paper is concerned with the economic state of Europe now and in the near future, it contains certain views which may have a wider application in time and in space. It is written in the belief that there are lessons to be learned from current European experience which have quite general significance for economic policy, public and private, here as well as in Europe. As the title of this paper suggests, it is intended as an essay in political economy rather than in pure economics or economic theory.

This article suggests possible remedies to deal with European financial crisis. Taxes must be greatly increased and public expenditures greatly diminished so that current revenues will not only meet prevailing expenditures but also suffice to permit some amortization of public debt. In Great Britain a restoration of the old gold parity should be looked for. There must be a rational economic settlement of the German reparations question, based on a dispassionate economic analysis of Germany's ability to pay. Industry in Europe must revive. It can be made to revive, however, if the reforms above indicated are accomplished, and if outside help in the form of new capital is obtained. Measures designed to help the exchange problem may properly be made part, however, of the more comprehensive settlement above outlined. A comprehensive settlement might be worked out in the form of a compact between the governments of Great Britain and the United States, together with the bankers of Great Britain, the United States, and Japan as the party of the first part, and the former Continental belligerents as the party of the second part. Part of the proceeds of the new loans made by the United States might well take the form of gold to increase the reserves of the authorities in Europe issuing paper money (chiefly central banks), so as to facilitate their resumption of actual specie payments.

There are two ways of approaching this question of revisions of European debt settlements. One is by an appeal to historical, legal, sentimental, and certain long-run economic considerations, the method that has been followed in the two papers preceding this. The other is to examine the drift of events which may conceivably have much to do with settling the argument. It is possible that the matter may be taken out of our hands, so to speak, and that new adjustments may occur while one is still debating. One will be remembered that in May 1921, claims against Germany were finally set at some 132 milliards of gold marks, including A, B and C bonds, and that attempts were made to collect 5 per cent interest plus 1 per cent sinking fund charges on the A and B bonds or a total of three milliards of marks per year. Against this effort disinterested economists everywhere protested. The Ruhr invasion and the collapse of Germany bear witness to the folly of demanding the impossible. Today the discussion rages around the possibility of collecting only 2.5 milliards per year which is a 6 per cent return on only 41,666,000,000 marks.

This article focuses on the major features in the European economic situation after the World War I, the land area in Europe is practically unchanged and the fertility of the soil has apparently not been greatly reduced. The devasted areas, quantitatively insignificant, have in large mea- sure already been restored. With labor, the problem is not quite so simple. In certain countries the population has been appreciably reduced, particularly that portion of the population which is at the most productive age. With plant and equipment (capital goods), the problem is, of course, much more difficult. Undoubtedly Europe is considerably short of the supply of capital goods that would have existed had the war not occurred. France has rebuilt a large portion of the destroyed areas, and, in the process, indirectly stimulated construction and related industries by continuing to run art annual government deficit of from twenty-five to thirty billions of francs. No one can deny that Great Britain's production and trade figures would have been much larger if the army of unemployed had been set to work at public expense building houses, factories, roads, etc.

This article presents a discussion on the research paper "Economic Integration in the European Soviet Bloc," by Edward Ames, professor at Purdue University, Indiana, published in the May 1959 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The term "integration" has been used rather abusively in relation to the area, and any systematic effort toward its definition needs to be welcomed heartily. After sketching briefly the pattern of international economic relations in the bloc, Ames advances two sets of standards against which he attempts to measure the integration achieved in the area. In his first solution, he refers specifically to market economies. In that framework, he equates integration to optimal distribution of goods within an area which amounts to the reaching of a single price for the same goods with differences in prices due only to transportation costs in a market which comprises either the whole globe or only a group of countries. This optimal distribution subsumes optimal utilization of factors even though the latter might not move freely. Integration thus requires that all or most goods be traded within the area. The movement toward or away from integration will be indicated for the given group of countries by the movement of their internal price structures toward similar or dissimilar patterns.

Following the restrictive phase of transportation regulation induced by the depression, with its limitations on entry and on competitive pricing, the interest in transport regulation has now swung somewhat in the other direction. It is the purpose of this paper to indicate how some of the same problems have been handled in other countries. For the problem raised by new technologies in transport, upsetting the old railway monopoly, is almost universal. While technological progress in the U.S. has been outstanding, U.S. institutions have maintained an ambivalent attitude. Some continental countries have shown flexibility in adapting their attitudes and institutions to the changed situation. European practice may contain useful lessons for people in the U.S. The standard solution to the problem of growing competition which new technologies present to traditional transport, adopted in the United States and many other countries, has been to impose restrictive handicaps on the new technologies. In the United States, the certificate of public convenience and necessity has been used to restrict the entry of new management into transportation.

Political and economic factors and considerations are inseparably intertwined in the European Recovery Program. The basic objectives are economic as well as political. Moreover, it is obvious that not only calculations of economic efficiency but also considerations concerning political and psychological reactions, both at home and abroad, profoundly influence the choice of methods of aid, decisions about the magnitude of the programs, the language used in outlining the plan and the emphasis placed on various aspects of the problems. In the present paper I confine myself, naturally, to the economics of the program, but occasional remarks about political factors and considerations cannot be avoided. The preparation of the program has been very thorough and the documentation is rich and of high quality. Apart from legal, administrative, business, and technical experts, an impressive array of economic luminaries have been engaged in all stages of the preparation of the plan. As a consequence, the general economist who has no inside information and whose knowledge is entirely derived from published material cannot possibly contribute much except on some rather broad though important issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most writers on mercantilism have neglected Portugal, and its colonial policy has attracted surprisingly little research. The destruction of a large mass of colonial papers in the Torte do Tombo Archives by the earthquake and ensuing fire on November 1, 1755, and the silence of the early chroniclers on such prosaic matters as trade and navigation have deterred many scholars interested in the Portuguese colonial system and seriously handicapped those who have persevered. Consequently, inadequate knowledge may explain the tendency to dismiss the Portuguese empire with the derogatory conclusions that it consisted only of a chain of forts and trading stations, developed no new institutions, set no important precedents, and made no significant contributions to colonial theory. Although precise information and many details are lacking, it is known that Portugal discovered the all-water route to the East Indies, established the first contacts with the natives, forged a colossal empire, exclusively controlled the East India trade for almost a century, solved a host of problems before any rival appeared on the scene, and smoothed the paths of Holland, England, and France to trade and empire in the East.

This paper attempts to analyze results, techniques and lessons of these monetary reform measures in liberated Europe against the background of the monetary and financial situation in the countries concerned. Since the autumn of 1944 a large number of European countries, with a view to controlling the monetary and financial legacy of war and occupation, have embarked upon monetary reform experiments of great interest to the student of monetary theory and practice. Broad objectives of most of these post-war monetary reform schemes have been to exert a restraining influence on the public's expenditures, to force people to seek employment by making them dependent on current income instead of past savings and to deprive public of funds with which to purchase in black markets. In some countries, the conversion of currency has been chiefly an instrument for the detection of concealed wealth held in monetary form and of income tax evasion during the war period. An incidental purpose of the reform measures has been to ascertain and cancel the amount of notes held by the enemy and lost or destroyed in the course of the war. Unification of the currency has been another, though never the sole, objective in countries where a multitude of currencies have been introduced during the war.

The article presents comments on the problems of international economic policy by providing various discussions from specialized conferences. There are two persistent enemies of international commerce. The one is restrictionism, the other discrimination. Great Britain and the United States alike have tried to compromise with both. Neither American protectionism, even as modified by the Hull agreements, nor the system of preferential tariffs, as exemplified in trade treaties among Great Britain and the Dominions, is consistent with international prosperity nor with international friendship. According to one of the economists, for the European continent foreign trade is simply vital for maintaining of decent living possibilities, it is not a question of a degree of economic stability but of the whole economic structure. The postwar balance of trade may be unfavorably affected by the structural changes in the British balance of payments, as Great Britain has been a big surplus importer from the European Continent, supplying it with dollars and other overseas exchanges.

The purpose of the paper is to carry out a theoretical appraisal of a labor-managed economy of Yugoslav type. It is this type of economy that represents, by and large, the true aspirations of reformers in eastern Europe. The labor-managed economy will be producing the maximum producible output from given resources and the maximum social satisfaction for a prescribed distribution of income. These conclusions follow from the fact that competitive labor-managed firms equalize factor marginal products to factor returns for all factors including labor, from competition in nonlabor factor markets, free entry of firms and identical technologies. The most significant comparative advantage of the labor-managed oligopoly arises in connection with product differentiation and sales promotion. It can be shown that the labor-managed firm will in equilibrium produce less and engage in a less intensive advertising campaign than an equivalent capitalist firm as long as the latter makes positive profits, a condition which obtains virtually without exception.

The article develops an economic hypothesis about the origin of social movements. The paper is divided into three parts: the first elaborates a theory of demand for social change or, more specifically, a theory about why the demand for change manifests itself in social movements. This first part, in turn, is subdivided into two sections examining: first, some structural components of the environment in which social movements originate and discussing, second, the definitions and assumptions of the proposed theory as well as its essential mechanisms. The second part introduces the concept of the supply of social movements and examines how this supply is related to the demand for social change. This discussion sheds some new light on the question of social change itself. This is briefly discussed in Section III. The hypothesis formulated appears to be consistent, at least in the large, with what is known of the history of social movements in Canada, in the United States, and in Europe during the first part of the twentieth century.

The article presents a discussion on issues related to economic integration in Europe. Economic expansion in the Common Market during its infant years was at a somewhat slower pace than during the years immediately preceding. The slackening of the growth rate, which is still about twice that of the U.S., professor Bela Balassa attributes in part to a tightening of the labor market. Even in the absence of emerging tariff discrimination, it was to be expected that Western European countries would obtain an increasing proportion of their imports from one another as long as Western Europe was becoming increasingly competitive in relation to the outside world. In any case, trade diversion in manufactured goods could hardly have been important up to the end of 1961. The emergence of tariff discrimination must be weighed against the virtual removal of Western European discrimination against the dollar area in the sphere of quantitative restrictions. The removal of Western European quotas on imports from the dollar area began in earnest less than a decade ago and continued on an important scale after the formation of the Common Market.

The objective of this article is to point out some lessons drawn from European experience with respect to railway finance and coordination. Immediately two difficulties appear here. First, the problem of selection of specific countries. The author tries to meet this problem by confining this article on railway finance proper to experience in Great Britain and France, where private ownerships typical. In the discussion of coordination, German experience is added, coordination being desirable under any system of ownership. These three countries provide a range from private ownership under a moderate degree of regulation, through private ownership under very complete regulation, to public ownership. The second problem is the difficulty and the danger of applying conclusions drawn from one set of conditions to another set. There are, however, enough common problems confronting European and American transportation to justify our consideration of foreign experience. Countries all over the world are greatly concerned with the plight of railway capital, with the effects of transport competition, and with the need for coordination; and various steps have been taken towards meeting these problems.

In proposing an international convention, for the restoration of gold as the common standard of international trade, the Economic Section of the Genoa Conference of April, 1922, presided over by Sir Robert Home, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: "The purpose of the convention would be to centralize and coordinate the demand for gold, and so to avoid those wide fluctuations in the purchasing power of gold which might otherwise result from tile simultaneous and competitive efforts of a number of countries to secure metallic reserves." And again, in Section 11 of these resolutions, the Committee accented this proposal when it declared: "Credit will be regulated not only with a view to maintaining the currencies at par with one another, but also with a view to preventing undue fluctuations in the purchasing power of gold." The Committee framing these resolutions comprised some of the ablest economists of Europe. As to the first resolution, several facts may be noted: 1) the metallic reserves of England, France, and several other of the chief commercial nations, are, like those of the United States, greater today by far than before the War; 2) The aggregate value in gold of the more stable of the depreciated currencies, like those of France, Belgium, Italy, Czecho-Slovakia, etc., tends to be roughly equivalent to the value which their pre-war currencies had in gold; 3) It follows that the stabilization of the principal currencies of Europe at or near their present gold parity would involve no great demand for metallic reserves, as for the most part these are now ample.

In this article, the author discusses on the role of the U.S. in the problem of stabilizing Europe. The author thinks that the very best and most fundamental method is for the U.S. is to join the League of Nations. This would go far toward solving the economic problems by removing or reducing a chief economic drain on European resources and would put the U.S. What is necessary is to induce France to accept the impartial settlement. She will apparently not accept any solution offered by another European power. She might accept an impartial investigation by the United States. If the matter were sanely handled, economically the rapid recovery of Europe would be possible; Europe itself is not bankrupt, but only her governments. If all inter-government debts could, by some magic wand, be canceled and all the other great government liabilities left by the World War I, such as pensions and military expenses, could likewise be abolished, Europe would recover with astonishing rapidity because her productive capacity is adequate.

The article discusses problems related to economic integration in Europe. The author has chosen to focus on the Common Market since this has clearly emerged as the nucleus of integration efforts in Europe. One recalls that the establishment of the Community in 1958 was greeted with expressions of sanguine hope by some observers and participants, while others expressed pessimistic views. The disagreements centered especially on the impact of the Common Market on trade patterns and economic growth. Although the experience of a few years that have elapsed since the treaty came into effect does not provide sufficient evidence for judging any of these issues, some tentative remarks can still be useful. The gross national product (GNP) of the Common Market countries increased by 20.9 per cent between 1957 and 1961, whereas the rise in the GNP of the U.S. and Great Britain was 9.8 per cent and 11.3 per cent, respectively. A comparison of rates of increase of manufacturing and industrial production has led some observers to conclude that apparently the Common Market's establishment did not contribute to economic growth in the participating countries.

The article examines the impact of European economic integration on the pattern of world trade with respect to nonmember countries. It is devoted to a theoretical presentation of the major economic effects of integration on trade and on welfare both from a short-run and long run standpoint. The theory underlying the tools used to measure quantitatively the effects of integration on these countries. It applies these tools to measure quantitatively the initial impact of European economic integration within the European Economic Community (EEC) on imports from nonmember countries. It will be seen that the initial impact is essentially the short-run consequence of tariff discrimination consequent to economic integration assuming constant capacity, efficiency, and tastes in the integrating countries. It attempts to estimate the effects of integration on growth and the resulting demand for imports. Very rough orders of magnitude of the demand for imports into the EEC from abroad are presented for 1975 on the basis of different assumptions concerning the rate of growth of gross national product.

This article focuses on the effect of increase in population on the economic development in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The period 1750-1850 saw sustained population increase in all parts of Europe sustained in the sense that there was never a fall in absolute numbers. In many areas the rates were as high as 1 per cent per annum. According to the author, population change is determined by a wide variety of influences, cultural and social as well as economic, and these have combined in many different ways at different times and places, even within the same neighborhood. In particular, it is difficult to disentangle those influences which were exerted over a wide area within a given time period and those which characterized a particular phase of economic development. So far as origins are concerned, the traditional mechanisms by which population growth was kept in line with resources was capable of producing an increase of population over several decades even in the absence of any long-term change in the capacity of the area to support population. Such mechanism work in Europe before the demographic revolution,

As indicated previously, the consequences of the Common Market for nonmember countries will depend as much or more on subsequent policy decisions of the Community as on the provisions of the Rome Treaty. This analysis suggests that at present nonmember countries have been put in a disadvantageous position. Future developments will depend in large measure on the willingness of the EEC to recognize the interests of nonmembers in their deliberations or, to use the standard phraseology, whether the Common Market will be outward or inward looking. There is some evidence to indicate that up to now the Community has been looking a little in both directions. One can get some comfort in the belief that the Common Market will be outward looking from the Rome Treaty itself. Article 110 indicates that the interests of the Community lie in expanding world trade. Furthermore, the influential leaders of the Commission of the EEC and Professor Hallstein in particular have continually supported this belief in public statements. Nor has the liberalism of the Common Market been confined to words alone. The first two internal tariff reductions were generalized to nonmember countries (as long as the resulting tariff did not fall below the external target rate). Also, the common Market was willing to enter negotiations through GATT in the so-called "Dillon round" and eventually reached agreements with other countries through which their external tariff was reduced by almost 20 per cent. There is some indication, however, of less liberal tendencies within the EEC. The tariff reductions made so far by the Common Market have been relatively painless in that they have merely removed some but not most of the excess protection created by the common external tariff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the economic integration in the communist countries of European Soviet bloc. The levels of prices in the individual countries have moved differently. In the Soviet Union, prices were doubled in 1949 and were gradually reduced until 1954, when they were stabilized. Satellite prices certainly rose from 1949 until about 1952 or 1953, at which time the currency systems of most of them had to be replaced. Through 1956, at least, wages tended to rise more rapidly than labor productivity, so that prices probably continued to rise there. However, there is no basis for saying that they have changed on the same rates or in the same proportions in the individual satellites. Moreover each country has a fixed exchange rate and indulges in fewer multiple rate practices than most free world countries. These exchange rates, however, seem to have little or nothing to do with "purchasing power parities." Most of the trade of each bloc country is with other bloc countries. Apart from unilateral payments, notably reparations to the Soviet Union by the former Axis allies.

The article presents the author's views on the Common Market and Free Trade and their effect on international capital movements specially on American private investment. The Common Market will have two important consequences on this pattern of international trade and investment. In the first place, the gradual elimination of trade barriers among the six, coupled with the maintenance of a common tariff against the outside world, will place American exporters to the Common Market countries at an increasing disadvantage with their competitors within those countries. This will induce many of them to shift from exporting to the area to investing within the area, by the establishment in Europe of branches or subsidiaries or by the licensing of processes to existing European firms. Other new American investment may also be attracted by the advantages of large-scale operation in a new common market of 160 million consumers. In the second place, there is likely to occur a significant redistribution of existing American investment within the six Common Market countries.

The article focuses on the economic and financial developments in western Europe. In Western Europe as in the United States, 1956 was a year of virtually unbroken boom; in 1957 signs of adjustment began to emerge. The principal task of the monetary authorities in all of the countries of Western Europe has been to moderate the boom so as to damp off inflation and maintain or achieve a tolerably stable monetary and economic position. It has to be concluded that on the domestic side the principal difficulties with which the countries of Western Europe have contended have arisen out of the conditions of economic expansion. The economic and financial situation in 1957, against the background of 1956, can be summarized by reference to the main trends in production, money supply, wages, and prices. Economic and financial developments in Western Europe are closely related to the external financial positions of these countries. All of them are in varying degrees heavily dependent on foreign trade, and only two Western Germany and Switzerland have gold and foreign exchange reserves large enough to make them relatively immune to balance-of-payments difficulties. Taking Western Europe as a whole, 1956 and 1957 show a continuation of the expansion of foreign trade which had been notable since 1953.

While government administrators were working overtime during the early postwar period to devise measures for more completely insulating their national economies from those of their neighbors, their more internationally minded countrymen were drawing up blueprints for regional economic intergration. Perhaps the ridiculous extremes of economic nationalism in Europe and elsewhere have been responsible for the widespread popularity of the proposals for the creation of customs unions, limited common markets, free-trade areas, and economic unions. For a variety of reasons both economic and political, the emphasis has been on regional economic integration rather than upon a general lowering of trade barriers in accordance with the principles of nineteenth century economic liberalism. Many observers are convinced that regional economic arrangements providing for the removal of intraregional trade barriers and for a certain amount of co-ordination or unification of internal and external economic policies represent the most promising means of escape from the waste and stagnation of economic nationalism in the free world.

The advocates of economic integration in Western Europe regard it as a panacea for many of the continent's economic ills. It is expected to work its beneficial effects through increased competition, more planning on a larger scale, and the creation of a European bureaucracy, expected to be less inefficient and less amenable to the pressure of sectional interests than some of the national bureaucracies it would replace. Since the last two factors raises far more political than economic questions, author only deals with the implications of the first, increased competition. This is generally expected to have more profound effects on the nature and direction of investment than on the utilization of existing equipment. The low labor productivity of European manufacturing industry is believed largely to be due to the use of obsolete and inefficient manufacturing equipment; and there is a strong feeling that integration would improve this situation. This article suggests that it should be possible to set up a system of intra-European exchange relations more flexible than a common currency and yet capable of offering businessmen adequate guarantees to encourage their catering to an all-European market and planning their investments accordingly.

During early post-Second World War years in the U.S., there had been much discussion concerning probable effects of large liquid asset holdings on consumption and private investment spendings. Many economists felt that excess liquidity would have a direct inflationary effect on spending habits of both households and business firms. Europe, however, had another concern, primarily because it was generally agreed that there was imminent danger of hyperinflation if the volume of liquid assets were not drastically reduced. Further, a widespread feeling existed that if assets were allowed to remain in the system they would undermine any monetary-fiscal program aimed at deflation. Through European eyes, the presence of large liquid asset holdings created a serious stumbling block in the path leading to inflation control. As a consequence, one principal anti-inflationary weapon used in this area of the world was monetary reforms, which, in one way or another, swept away large portions of liquid assets accumulated by the public in the course of war and occupation.

The article focuses on problems of trade between planned economies. These problems can be, firstly, problem of trade between economies in which free enterprise has simply ceased to exist. Secondly, the problem of trade between those countries and others, and finally, the problem of trade faced by partially socialized economies which practice state trading in some fields but not all, both among themselves and with enterprise economies. The conduct of trade is in the hands of state monopolies or boards which operate within the framework of agreements negotiated by governments. A country that indulges in a high degree of specialization in an international trading community in which a fair amount of competition prevails and in which prices are the principal guide to buying and selling, subjects its economic development to the dictates of the market. In return it obtains a higher per capita consumption or may support a larger population or both. There could be cases where the combination of credit and long-term contracts would be of advantage to both trading partners.

A national debt is one of the few important economic phenomena without roots in the Ancient World. The accumulation of treasure in peacetime, arbitrary sequestration of resources in wartime, and extraordinary taxes in times of emergency precluded significant public indebtedness by the great powers of classical antiquity. Because of weak central governments, uncertain rules of succession, a virtual lack of public services, and feudal support of military operations, national debts were neither necessary nor possible in the early Middle Ages. The nascent states of Western Europe began to borrow by the middle of the 13th century, and modern methods of issuing and transferring public obligations arose even earlier in the Italian city states. But owing to the scarcity of liquid capital, the canonical and civil opposition to interest upon loans, and the instability of central governments, the sums borrowed were never large. The debts were usually guaranteed by pledges of jewelry, specific revenues, or real property; and almost invariably they were regarded as personal obligations of the reigning sovereign.

Presents information on various articles related to economics, published in the June 1963 issue of 'Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv.' Economic integration in the field of trade and labor movements in Europe; Taxation of good in common markets.