International Economics

The policy orientation of this book is an attempt to broaden the subject of international economics. There are whole chapters and parts of chapters that may seem to be interlopers in the society of textbooks, but history is on my side. Foreign aid, to take an example, is not just an episode; it is a major category of analysis in intergovernmental economics, deserving systematic analytical treatment, and not to be subsumed under any particular program like the Marshall Plan or any particular problem or objective like dollar shortage or economic development. East-West strategic trade con trols and national-defense trade policy, to take two other examples, have been elevated in this book from the "miscellaneous" category to the level of entire chapters. I did not elevate them; governments did. What I have tried to do is to give these and many other topics systematic treatment commen surate with their contemporary importance and to do so in a way that uses and unifies economic theory.

Technical theory has been held to the minimum necessary for pursuing the policy questions raised in this book. I have not intentionally included any theory for its own sake. Certain parts of the theory have been given ex tended treatment, but only because I have considered it necessary in some cases to build downward to the foundations. In my experience, even ad vanced students often have only a tenuous hold on income and price-level theory or central-banking operations, and can profitably think their way through the analysis again rather than coast along on memorized formulae.