International trade

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1758394757

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136209

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Taussig, Frank William http://d-nb.info/gnd/120199459

Title:: International trade

Place of publication:: New York, NY

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XXI, 425 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Problems of verification

Collection:: Economics Books

THE FOREIGN EXCHANGES 221 adjusting and equalizing the payments between nations have been utilized and exhausted, specie will flow in payment of balances. When trade is following its ordinary peaceful course, in a world not racked by political or economic cataclysms, it is likely to flow in small volume, even in driblets. Each driblet, slight tho it be, af- fects a susceptible spot, and tends to be minimized by reaction in some other part of the delicate adjustment. But if there be a succession of such influences — if there be a continued lack of equilibrium between a country’s debits and credits — something more happens. There is then no way of resisting the inevitable readjustment. Sustained changes in the demand for goods, or continuing remittances on other than merchandise account, will show their consequences sooner or later in the international dis- tribution of specie. Then the question becomes one of changes in prices and money incomes, and involves the somewhat different (tho not unrelated) problems of sensitiveness considered in the preceding chapter. And the question arises, too, whether in the slow process of adjustment toward the eventual outcome there may not emerge, when the final survey has been completed and the last consequences have been verified, a residuum of unex- plained phenomena — puzzling occurrences that cannot be brought into accord with even the most guarded theoretical formulation. All these considerations emphasize once more the importance of the element of time. Thruout the present economic system, with its intricate specialization of industry, its persistence in the grooves of custom, its repeated disturbance by an imperfect money system, there must be time for the fundamental forces to bring about their results. These forces are modified, counteracted, strength- ened, by others of less strength but of more rapid operation; and they are themselves subject to change in the course of time. Hence the difficulty of tracing their operation in detail, and of see- ing just how they work; indeed, of ascertaining whether they work at all in the way that general reasoning leads us to expect. [t is only in outstanding and conspicuous cases that we can sub- ject the general reasoning to specific verification. One such case will be considered in the next chapter.

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