Unequal partners (Vol.2)

THE essays collected in these volumes offer a vigorous and brilliant commentary on international economic relations from 1930 to 1960. There are two substantial introductory essays, providing a coherent and powerful statement of the author's position on theory and policy, and some forty articles which were originally published in many different journals. These reprints have been heavily edited to remove tiresome repetition and stale controversy; but the characteristic polemic style and theoretical adven turousness of the original articles have been retained, together with both the successes and failures of analysis and prognostication.
There are two recurrent themes-one of 'real' analysis, emphasizing the irrelevance of static models to a world economy which is subject to continual and often violent change; and one of monetary analysis, demonstrating the appalling similarity between the Central European payments crises of 1930 and the inter national liquidity problem of 1961. And animating the whole book is the author's recognition that the world economy is not composed of a large number of small and similar countries', but of a set of very unequal partners.

The books are arranged in two volumes one theoretical and one applied. This second volume will be an important source for those who wish to acquire a sense not only of the continuity in our economic problems, but also of the characteristic flavour of the 1940s and 1950s. But one of the author's strongest views is that economic theory cannot profitably be divorced from economic fact, and the practising econoraist, young or old, will find theory and fact most fruitfully intermingled throughout both books.