Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Ragnar Nurkse: Trade and Development
- 1 Causes and Effects of Capital Movements (1934)
- 2 The Schematic Representation of the Structure of Production (1935)
- 3 Conditions of International Monetary Equilibrium (1945)
- 4 Domestic and International Equilibrium (1947)
- 5 International Monetary Policy and the Search for Economic Stability (1947)
- 6 Growth in Underdeveloped Countries (1952)
- 7 Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries (1953)
- 8 Period Analysis and Inventory Cycles (1954)
- 9 A New Look at the Dollar Problem and the United States Balance of Payments (1954)
- 10 International Investment To-day in the Light of Nineteenth-Century Experience (1954)
- 11 The Relation between Home Investment and External Balance in the Light of British Experience, 1945–1955 (1956)
- 12 Reflections on India's Development Plan (1957)
- 13 Balanced and Unbalanced Growth (1957)
- 14 International Trade Theory and Development Policy (1957)
- 15 Trade Fluctuations and Buffer Policies of Low-income Countries (1958)
- 16 Patterns of Trade and Development (1959)
- Notes
- Bibliography
9 - A New Look at the Dollar Problem and the United States Balance of Payments (1954)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Ragnar Nurkse: Trade and Development
- 1 Causes and Effects of Capital Movements (1934)
- 2 The Schematic Representation of the Structure of Production (1935)
- 3 Conditions of International Monetary Equilibrium (1945)
- 4 Domestic and International Equilibrium (1947)
- 5 International Monetary Policy and the Search for Economic Stability (1947)
- 6 Growth in Underdeveloped Countries (1952)
- 7 Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries (1953)
- 8 Period Analysis and Inventory Cycles (1954)
- 9 A New Look at the Dollar Problem and the United States Balance of Payments (1954)
- 10 International Investment To-day in the Light of Nineteenth-Century Experience (1954)
- 11 The Relation between Home Investment and External Balance in the Light of British Experience, 1945–1955 (1956)
- 12 Reflections on India's Development Plan (1957)
- 13 Balanced and Unbalanced Growth (1957)
- 14 International Trade Theory and Development Policy (1957)
- 15 Trade Fluctuations and Buffer Policies of Low-income Countries (1958)
- 16 Patterns of Trade and Development (1959)
- Notes
- Bibliography
Summary
The most essential condition for achieving a fuller convertibility of currencies is a removal of the persistent disequilibrium in trade and payments between the dollar area and the rest of the world. Inconvertibility has not been the disease itself so much as a symptom of the stubborn maladjustment commonly called the dollar gap. In these circumstances discrimination in trade and exchange control has appeared to the dollar-deficit countries as a way of preventing their mutual trade from being strangled by restrictions imposed on payments grounds on imports from the dollar area.
Absence of such maladjustment as a prerequisite to convertibility is particularly important for a currency like sterling, in which some 40 or 50 per cent of the world's trade is conducted. The pound sterling, being a world currency, would, if it were made more fully convertible, inevitably feel some of the strain of the world's dollar disequilibrium, even if the dollar position of Britain herself or the sterling area as a whole had been brought into balance.
But now, as we take a new look at the dollar gap, we find that it seems to have closed. Since the middle of 1952 the current account of the United States balance of payments has been practically in equilibrium: United States exports and imports of goods and services have almost exactly balanced. For a statistical account of this remarkable change I refer to the Federal Reserve Bulletin of October 1953.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ragnar NurkseTrade and Development, pp. 237 - 248Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2009