International Economics [antikvár]

Chapter \ THE STUDY OF 1 j INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS International Economies and Economies in General Study of international économies can be justified—if there be a need to do so—on two bases, one applicable to the professional economist and the other to the général citizen. To the former, international économies is sometimes thought to be different in kind from other branches of économies, but it is more usually regarded as different only in degree. In any case it is held to merit attention beoause it richly illustrâtes the com-plexity of the general-equilibrium system as it interrelates the pure theory of allocation and exchange ( microeconomics ) with monetary and income adjustment ( macroeconomics ). For the citizen, some capacity to handle the concepts of international économies would appear to be a necessity as the world approaches the 21st century, to enable him to form opinions on the wide-ranging argument as to whether international economie rela-tionships are benign or exploitative, and to make choices, as a voter, be-tween more international interdependence and what appears to be a rising tide of nationalism or neomercantilism, with attention turned inward to domestic problems. If resources are scarce—an assumption which un-derlies ail économies and which, if not self-evident for material goods in an age of affluence, is at least true for the citizen's time and attention—it may be necessary to choose between expanding trade, an effective international monetary system, and assistance to developing nations on the one hand; and domestic problems of urban decay, limited opportunities for minorities of all kinds, and pollution on the other. Différences in Kind In classical économies, the principles which determined relative values or prices differed between interrégional and international trade because factors of production—labor and capital, if not land—were mobile within a country but immoble between countries. Some economists point up the 1