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
10 - International Investment To-day in the Light of Nineteenth-Century Experience (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
To many Americans to-day the problem of international investment is doubtless a source of perplexity and even of some irritation. Ever since the last world war great expectations have been placed on the export of private American capital as a means of bridging the dollar gap as well as financing world economic development. In reality, private foreign investment throughout the period since 1945 has fluctuated at a low level and without any sign at all of an upward trend. This is most disappointing. We suspect that the export of capital from Great Britain was one reason why the international economy of the Victorian era did not know of a chronic sterling shortage. We recognise, above all, that foreign investment was associated during that era with a tremendous spurt in world production and trade. There is in America a feeling of nostalgia for the nineteenth-century environment that made this flow of capital possible. The question is: why can we not re-create that environment?
The answer, I submit, must start from the fact that the circumstances in which overseas investment, and more especially British investment, went on in the nineteenth century (which I take to have ended in 1914) were in some ways quite exceptional. To realise this is of more than historical interest. So long as the peculiar features of that experience are not fully appreciated, memories of wonders worked by foreign investment in the past can only lead to false hopes and frustration.
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- Information
- Ragnar NurkseTrade and Development, pp. 249 - 260Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2009