James Meade: Balance

James Meade was British economist. Explore interesting quotes on balance.

James Meade: 30 quotes0 likes

“Professor Ohlin also made an important contribution to what now might be called the macro-economic aspects of a country's balance of payments. In 1929 in the Economic Journal he engaged in a famous controversy with Keynes on the problem of transferring payments from one country to another across the foreign exchanges. In this he laid stress upon the income-expenditure effects of the reduced spending power in the paying country and of the increased spending power in the recipient country. In doing so he made use of the usual distinction between a country's imports and exports; but in addition he emphasised the importance of the less usual distinction between a country's domestic non-tradeable goods and services and its tradeable, exportable and importable, goods. I made some use of this latter distinction in my Balance of Payments; but looking back I regret that I did not let it play a much more central role in that book”

The Meaning of "Internal Balance", (1977)

“It is a special privilege for me on this occasion to have my name associated with that of Professor Bertil Ohlin. By the younger generation of economists we are no doubt both regarded as what in my country are now known as 'senior citizens'; but I am just that much younger than Professor Ohlin to have regarded him as one of the already established figures when I was first trying to understand international economics. His great work on International and Interregional Trade opened up new insights into the complex of relationships between factor supplies, costs of movement of products and factors, price relationships, and the actual international trade in products, migration of persons, and flows of capital. Of the two volumes which I later wrote on International Economic Policy - namely, The Balance of Payments and Trade and Welfare”

it is in the latter that the influence of this work by Professor Ohlin is most clearly marked.
The Meaning of "Internal Balance", (1977)

“Now there are two ways in which the authorities of a particular country may combine the use of financial policy and of price adjustment. (i) First, financial policy may be used for the preservation of internal balance and price adjustment for the preservation of external balance. (ii) Second, financial policy may be used for the preservation of external balance and price adjustment for the preservation of internal balance. On either of these principles the authorities of any one country can set about the simultaneous preservation of internal and external balance.”

Source: The balance of payments, 1951, p. 157; As cited in: Metaxas & Weber (2013, p. 22)

“On principle i relative prices will be lowered in the interests of external balance and domestic expenditure will be inflated in the interests of internal balance. Internal balance will be very quickly restored although there is no net change in external balance. Relative prices must, therefore, continue to be lowered, which will tend now to produce a boom at home. The inflationary financial policy must, therefore, be replaced by a deflationary policy. In the end relative prices will be substantially lowered, while there may be a small net inflation or deflation of domestic expenditure by financial policy.”

Source: The balance of payments, 1951, p. 160; As cited in: Metaxas & Weber (2013, p. 22)

“We shall talk as if the objective of internal balance were simply that of maintaining a level of total demand for all the country’s products sufficiently high to maintain full employment, but not so high as to lead to a continuing inflation of money prices and costs.”

Source: The balance of payments, 1951, p. 106; As cited in: Metaxas & Weber (2013, p. 20)