The new economic nationalism / edited by Otto Hieronymi

The present volume deals with what threatens to become the central economic issue of the 1980s: the revival of economic nationalism. The excep tional record of growth and prosperity of the last thirty years has been closely linked to the development of a stable and liberal interna tional economic order. The crisis of the 1970s has interrupted this process of liberalisation and integration in the world economy.

The breakdown of the gold-exchange standard and the adoption of floating exchange rates represented the victory of monetary nationalism in both inflationary and non-inflationary, and in deficit and in surplus countries. The wide spread uncertainty and the persistent high level of unemployment have resulted in a marked rise of protectionist pressures throughout the OECD countries. Also, for the first time since the 1940s, the open advocacy of protectionism is once more becoming intellectually respectable.

The papers included in this book were originally presented at an international conference on The New Economic Nationalism organised by the Battelle-Geneva Research Centre. Written by a group of outstanding experts, they provide a thorough analysis of the origins, the different manifestations, and the possible consequences of modern economic nationalism.

The three parts of the book deal with the three fundamental questions: the relationship between the upheavals in the world economy in the 1970s and the revival of economic nationalism, the objectives and instruments of trade policy in the future, and whether the rise of economic nationalism will lead to the social and political disasters that have been experienced in the past.

The concern for the future of the liberal international economic order is the common theme of the book. Its conclusion is that in order to reverse the current trend of economic nationalism the United States, Europe and Japan have to make a serious concerted effort to find a new vision of economic order and of a common economic future based on the . principles of stability, economic efficiency and solidarity.