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

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Problems of verification

Collection:: Economics Books

256 INTERNATIONAL TRADE is of importance not so much by way of indicating that the figures are to be suspected, as for the purpose of illustrating further the distinction between the gross and the net barter terms. Turn now once more to the chart. The movements which it shows — the changes in the terms of trade — are in clear accord with what is to be expected on grounds of theory. That the gross barter terms should vary as they do, becoming more favorable until 1900, thereafter less favorable, is indeed easily in accord with theory. They will naturally fluctuate in the same direction as the balance of payments. When the balance of money pay- ments due from other countries to Great Britain becomes larger, more goods move to Great Britain. As need hardly be said again, this increase in the physical quantity of the imports is not the same as the excess (or enlarged excess) of the money values of the imports, or in proportion to that excess. But it is in the same direction; it is but another phase of the same movement. We can easily understand, therefore, that the gross barter terms became more favorable during the period 1880 to 1900, when the excess of imports over exports was enlarging, and became less favorable after 1900, when the excess was declining. More significant in its relation to theory, however, is the fact that the net barter terms move in the same direction. On grounds of deductive reasoning we have argued that when a country has payments to receive for other items than merchandise, the direct and simple exchange of goods for goods is also affected, and is affected to the country’s greater advantage. Not only does it get a special and additional inflow of goods on the invisible account, but the main stream of goods, so to speak — that which comes in exchange for its own merchandise exports — reaches it on better terms. The course of prices for imports and for exports, and the physical volume of imports got for the exports, are such that it obtains a larger share of the total divisible gain from the inter- national barter. And so it proves in this case. The net barter terms of trade are modified to the advantage of Great Britain during the period from 1880 to 1900, while the tendency to gains of this kind is checked from 1900. An elusive set of facts, of a

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