A new approach to the balance of payments theory has been developing rapidly and gaining popularity in recent years as an alternative to the elasticity approach, the absorption approach, and other keynesian approaches. It is important to note that the...
A new approach to the balance of payments theory has been developing rapidly and gaining popularity in recent years as an alternative to the elasticity approach, the absorption approach, and other keynesian approaches. It is important to note that the monetary approach is new in the context of balance of payments theory as it has developed since the 1930s, when the collapse of the liberal international economic order based on the goldstandard system was accompanied by the keynesian revolution in economic theory. The monetary approach actually represents a return to the classical tradition of international monetary theory established by the work of David Hume, summarized in the classical price-specie-flow mechanism of adjustment to international monetary disequilibria.
The essence of the new approach is to insist that the balance of payments is a monetary and not a real phenomenon, and in particular that balance of payments adjustments involve adjustments between actual and desired stock of money and other assests in which change in rhade and capital flow play a transitory role. These broad principles of the monetary approaches are as follows;
The first feature is summarized in the fundamental proposition that the balance of payments is essentially monetary phenomenon.
And the second feature is the use of the money supply process and particularly, the demend for money function as the central theoretical relationships around which to organize thought concerning the balance of payments.
Fanally, it concentrates on the longer-run conwequences of policy and parametric changes for the behaviour of the balance of payments, coupled with an developing view of the processes through which these longer-run consequences come about.
This paper attempts to provide a specific example of the monetary approach by analysing the effects of a tariff on the balance of payments. The question of the effects of a tariff on the balance of payments, rather than the more standard question of the effects of a devaluation, is discussed because the analysis of this question brings out most forcefully the essentially monetary character of the balance of payments. A tariff is a real policy which has its primary effects on real variables such as relative prices, levels of production and consumption, and the volume of trade. These real effects can be analysed in an exclusively real model. It is arqued, however, that the effects of a tariff on the balance of payments cannot be analysed except in an explicitly monetary model. Further, the common-sense view that a tariff improves the balance of payments because it discourages import is shown to be fallacious.
The monetary approach to the balance of payment is to be able to be contrasted with keynesian analysis about the effects of growth on balance of payments. It shows the strong results that an increase in growth must improve the balance of payments. An increase in output induces excessive flow demand for liquidity and it results in balance of payments surplus.
The monetary models of balance of payments are long-run modeils, in as much as they assume full employment of resources and the necessity for domestic price levels to keep in line with the world price levels. The keynesian model with which they have been contrasted applies to a short run in which these assumptions do not necessarily, or commonly, hold. The keynesian model has become the basis for policy-thing and policy formulation. The monetary models suggest that it may be very misleading to rely on the keynesian model as a guide to policy-making over a succession of short periods within each of which the keynesian model may appear to be a reasonable approximation to reality.
Finally it is worth while to demonstrate that the monetary approach is not limited to the analysis of tariffs and growth. It can be applied to any commercial policy.