The Balance Of Payments

The Balance of Payments Textbook, like the Balance of Payments Compilation Guide, is a companion document to the fifth edition of the Balance of Payments Manual. The Textbook provides illustrative examples and applications of concepts, definitions, classifications, and conventions contained in the Manual and affords compilers with opportunities for enhancing their understanding of the relevant parts of the Manual. The Textbook is one of the main reference materials for training courses in balance of payments methodology.

An original and systematic synthesis of the major postwar developments in theory and policy of balance-of-payments adjustment, this book focuses on the present-day system of pegged-but-adjustable exchange rates and the problems that policy authorities must face if they are to attain full employment, price stability, balance-of-payments equilibrium, and a satisfactory rate of economic growth. The dominate theme of this book is that any system of exchange rates carries with it assumptions about the way it works and how effective the automatic and policy-motivated forces operate to bring about equilibrium in a country's balance of payments. By analyzing balance-of-payments adjustment and policies under alternative exchange-rate systems, and with different assumptions concerning the level of employment and prices, it is possible to embrace a wide variety of contemporary and historical circumstances experienced by individual countries and the world as a whole. In this way the author assesses the economic consequences of the different exchange-rate systems and of the policies that countries may follow to attain their national objectives. In particular it appears to Professor Stern that the international monetary turmoil of the past ten years can be traced to the exchange-rate inflexibilities of the adjustable-peg system and to the creation of excessive reserves under the dollar standard. He demonstrates that the international monetary system must be redesigned to permit greater exchange-rate inflexibility and control over the creation of new international reserve assets.

A companion document to the fifth edition of the Balance of Payments Manual, the Balance of Payments Compilation Guide shows how the conceptual framework described in the Manual may be implemented in practice. The primary purpose of the Guide is to provide practical guidance for using sources and methods to compile statistics on the balance of payments and the international investment position. the Guide is designed to assist balance of payments compilers and statisticians in understanding the relative strengths and weaknesses of various approaches. The material reflects the emergence of new data sources and adaptations in the application of statistical methodologies to changing circumstances. Discussed in the Guide are all of the tasks that a BOP compiler normally performs. Appendices contain a set of model BOP questionnaires and a set of model BOP publication tables. Relationships between the balance of payments statistics and relevant aspects of national accounts are covered as well.

This general introduction to the theory of money and of balance of payments adjustment was originally published in 1969. It was the first book to pay full attention to the theory of assets: the relation of the supply of assets to the demand for holding them and the significance of asset movements for balance of payments adjustment. Written in simple language and with brevity, the book is intended for the student with a general knowledge of economics and economic institutions, but with no specialised knowledge of these topics.

This book collects together the basic documents of an approach to the theory and policy of the balance of payments developed in the 1970s. The approach marked a return to the historical traditions of international monetary theory after some thirty years of departure from them – a departure occasioned by the international collapse of the 1930s, the Keynesian Revolution and a long period of war and post-war reconstruction in which the international monetary system was fragmented by exchange controls, currency inconvertibility and controls over international trade and capital movements.