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 III. International trade under inconvertible paper

Collection:: Economics Books

SOME EXPERIENCES UNDER PAPER MONEY 405 presumption that domestic prices rose more than did export prices. Here again we must supplement the fragmentary evi- dence by hypothesis and interpretation; we can do no more than resort to the very theories which we wish to test. There is, indeed, one piece of evidence which may carry us a bit further. It appears that the prices of exported goods did not advance as fast or as much as the gold premium itself. On general principles, they might be expected to rise precisely in proportion to the premium, parallel to it. The fact that they rose less would accentuate the repression of exports resulting from the failure of both to rise in accord with domestic prices. But other causes than those connected with the loans might lead to the lag of export prices. The gold prices of the Argentine exports (among which wool, wheat, and maize were the most important) were determined by world conditions, and were subject to the crop fluctuations which obscure the general trend of agricultural prices. Their special conditions might easily be such as to depress the prices of the agricultural products having a world market, and to account for the exceptional movement of export prices in Argen- tina. Their failure to advance as much as did the gold premium is hardly to be related with any certainty to the Argentine borrow- ings and their influence on the course of sterling exchange.! t In this regard, as in some others, I find myself unable to interpret all the phe- nomena of the Argentine episode in quite the same way as Professor Williams. He is inclined to the view that an issue of inconvertible paper operates in itself to stimulate exports and that therefore the failure of exports to swell during the years 1886-90 needs an explanation. As stated above (pp. 385-389) paper inflation does not in my judgment necessarily stimulate either exports or imports. The course of events in the Argentine before 1890 seems to illustrate the fact that there are some conditions under which the effect is to give a bounty on imports, not on exports, while after 1890 the illustration runs the other way — that there are other condi- tions under which a bounty on exports arises. Something of the same sort is to be said of the relation between prices and money wages. Money wages in Argentina failed to advance in proportion to prices; and business profits rose. They rose, it would seem, in all industries; inflation served, as has been so commonly the case, to fatten profits all around, and to cut down commodity wages. This, however, was seemingly the outcome in industry at large, not in the export industries alone. While the lag in money wages appeared in the export industries, as it did elsewhere, the rise of profits, if I interpret the phenomena rightly, was here less than elsewhere. Unfortunately we lack the statistical evidence which would be conclusive on this point, as we do on the extent to which a rise in domestic prices took place. It must be remembered, too, that the Argentine at this time was still in the early stages of pioneer development and that not only are the records inadequate, but the

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