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United States Economic Foreign Policy: Research Requirements for 1965

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

C. P. Kindleberger
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Extract

The last several decades have each been broadly characterized by one or two central economic questions. In the 1920's the central problem was international capital transfers, or reparations and war debts; in the 1930's, the international spread of unemployment and destabilizing speculation; in the late 1940's, after the war, reconstruction; in the 1950's, defense economics and growth.

Not only can we identify them; it is on the whole fair to say that the central problems of the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's have been solved. International capital transfer is accomplished by preventing war debts from accumulating, paying limited reparations in kind, and furnishing the capital needed for reconstruction, and in part for economic growth, as grants or on liberal loan terms.

Type
Research Notes
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1959

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References

1 CED, In, Problems of United States Economic Development, Vol. 1, New York, 1958, pp. 2732.Google Scholar

2 See especially Elliott, W. Y., ed., A Foreign Economic Policy for the United States, New York, 1955Google Scholar; and Panel 111, Special Studies Project of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Foreign Economic Policy for the Twentieth Century, New York, 1958.Google Scholar

3 Liesner, H. H., The Import Dependence of Britain and Western Germany: A Comparative Study, Princeton Studies in International Finance, No. 7, Princeton University, 1957.Google Scholar

4 See the work of the FAO Committee on Commodity Problems, including the Commodity Policy Studies.

5 See Food Research Institute of Stanford University, “Publications, 1946–1948,” Stanford, Calif., April 1948.

6 See the annual review of the UN Secretariat on International Commodity Arrangements, now succeeded by the reports of the Commodity Commission.

7 Princeton, N.J., 1945.

8 Montreal, 1945.

9 Dunham, A. L., The Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce of 1860 and the Progress of the Industrial Revolution in France, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1930, p. 145.Google Scholar

10 New York, 1957.

11 The Future Growth of World Population, New York, 1958.

12 See The Economics of 1960, London, 1942, and “Halfway to 1960,” Lloyds Bank Review, No. 24 (April 1952), pp. 1–13.

13 “World Production, Prices and Trade, 1870–1960,” Manchester School, XX (May 1952), pp. 105–38.

14 See the foreword to General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Trends in International Trade, A Report by a Panel of Experts, Geneva, October 1958.

15 See especially Brecher, Irving and Reisman, S. S., Canada-United States Economic Relations, Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects, July 1957.Google Scholar

16 It should be noted that the National Planning Association was enabled to undertake research into particular foreign investment activities only on the condition that it avoid discussion of the rate of profit. This is Hamlet without the Prince. Other important work in the area which should be mentioned is going forward in the Harvard Law School's International Project, and in the Columbia School of Business Administration's International Business Project on Joint Ventures. A useful addition to the literature is the set of Hearings on Private Foreign Investment before the Subcommittee on Economic Foreign Policy of the House Ways and Means Committee in December 1958.

17 See Millikan, M. F. and Rostow, W. W., A Proposal: Key to United States Foreign Policy, New York, 1957.Google Scholar

18 For example, how is the capacity to absorb capital affected by the form taken by the goods imported under the loan; and where, if one were trying to saturate countries with all the capital mey could absorb, would one draw the line between the rapidly growing country which cannot be said to “need” the capital, even though it could use it, and the stagnant or slowly growing countries which need it but cannot use it? In this connection there is a very real problem of dividing aid, whether loans or grants, among countries engaged on developmental programs. I gravely doubt whether objective economic criteria can alter die essentially political character of die process.

19 Gilbert, M. and Kravis, I. B., Comparative National Products and Price Levels, Paris, 1958.Google Scholar

20 Cantril, Hadley, The Politics of Despair, New York, 1958.Google Scholar

21 New York, 1953.

22 International Reserves and Liquidity, Washington, D.C., August 1958.

23 A. C. L. Day, The Future of Sterling, London, 1954.Google Scholar

24 Shonfield, Andrew, British Economic Policy Since the War, London, 1958.Google Scholar

25 See The Economist, March 15 and March 29, 1958, pp. 930 and 1125, respectively.

26 See Harrod, R. F., The Dollar, New York, 1953Google Scholar, and his latest Statement of the gold price proposal in the Economic Journal, LXVIII (September 1958), p. 538.

27 Klopstock, F. H., The International Status of the Dollar, Essays in International Finance, No. 28, Princeton University, May 1957.Google Scholar