International economic relations : proceedings of the third Congress of the International Economic Associaltion.
- London Macmillan. 1972
- 281 p.
The International Economic Association holds every sixth year an Open Congress which all members of the forty-six national bodies affiliated to the Association can freely attend. The Congress of 1968 was held by invitation of the Canadian Government and with its support in Montreal-the first time that the Association had met on North American soil. For the subject of the Congress "The Future of International Economic Relations" was chosen.
The work of the Congress was planned by Paul Samuelson, Erik Lundberg and Harry Eastman. The volume prints Paul Samuelson's Presidential Address in which he, light-heartedly but with profundity, surveys the work in international trade theory during his lifetime.
It was planned to centre the work of the Congress on eight main papers dealing with five broad topics. Professor Hla Myint appraised the recent work in the field of international trade and developing countries: Professor Harry Johnson that in the theory of international trade: Professor T. Khachaturov, Professor Alec Nove and Professor Imre Vajda the recent thinking on trade in a non-laisser-faire world. Professor André Marchal, who died shortly before the Congress, had already completed his work on the Common Market. Professor Tibor Scitovsky appraised the recent thinking on international liquidity and the reform of the adjustment mechanism.
Following its usual practice, the International Economic Association invited two or three scholars to make initial comments on each of these papers: their comments, as well as the original papers are printed in this volume: they included Richard Caves, Murray Kemp, Evsey Domar, Alec Cairncross, Egon Sohmen, John Young, Assar Lindbeck and Paolo Baffi.
To permit as many as possible of more than five hundred participants to engage in discussion the Association organised, in relation to each paper, some five or six round table discussions. The outcome of the discussions were reported to the Congress by five rapporteurs-S. G. Triantis, P. N. Rasmussen, Michael Kaser, Sir Donald MacDougall and Fritz Machlup; their summaries are also printed here.
The volume thus reports the present state of economic thinking about the theory of international trade and its application to the four major problems of our time-the development of backward countries, the improvement of East-West trade relations, the establishment of customs unions and common market areas, the working out of a satisfactory system of international liquidity.