International Economics

$ 70.00 / 332 pages Note : This is an e-book, not a printed book.

From the late 1950s through the mid 1960s Mundell produced an astonishing crop of creative work that remains influential through the present day. Much of his most significant work was collected in his justly celebrated treatise International Economics, published in 1968.

Introduction to the 1968 edition:

This book brings together, and to a certain extent integrates, my theoretical writings on international economics over the past decade. All the major topics are touched on, and I have organized them into a pattern that seemed to me to make them most useful to the student. Part I analyzes the classical theory and covers such topics as the terms of trade, income transfers, pro­ductivity changes, tariffs, consumption taxes, production taxes, transport costs, tariff preferences, factor mobility, and policy analysis in the context of general equilibrium systems. Part II introduces monetary-dynamic elements into the theory of exchange and develops the theory of adjustment, the balance of payments, growth, the distribution of the burden of adjustment, optimum currency areas, monetary standards, and fixed and flexible exchange rate systems. Part III treats international macroeconomic theory from the stand­point of the theory of policy and develops the principle of effective market classification, the appropriate mix of monetary and fiscal policy under fixed and flexible exchange systems, capital mobility, the international trans­mission of cycles, commercial policy, the welfare cost of exchange crises, the crisis problem, and multiple-currency systems.

Many of the topics covered in this book have a bearing on the great controversies that have raged in the economics profession since the publication of Keynes' General Theory. Keynes' attempt to integrate real and monetary phenomena was only partially successful, but he gave new scope to economic thinking about theory and policy. Just as theorists in the nineteenth century eventually settled their differences over which blade of the scissors did the cutting, so economists today are becoming increasingly impatient with analysis based solely on multiplier or on velocity approaches to income determination. What emerges is a richer and more useful theory based on general equilibrium analysis. To accelerate this end, in the field of international economics, I trust this book makes a contribution.

Robert A. Mundell