James Meade: Policy

“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”

James Meade

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

Understanding , Personality , Country

“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.”

James Meade

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

Way , Country

“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.”

James Meade

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

Home , Change

“By a ‘spontaneous disturbance’ we shall mean any change in the underlying conditions, the cause of which we are prepared to take for granted and do not wish to examine, but the effect of which on the domestic and external position of our two countries we wish to examine. By a ‘policy’ change we shall mean a change which the State or some public authority brings about as a result of a definite decision of State policy in order to achieve some given end of general economic policy and in particular to offset some of the effects of a ‘spontaneous disturbance’. Finally, by an ‘induced’ change is meant a change in some quantity which occurs on purely commercial principles because of the repercussions of some previous ‘spontaneous’ or ‘policy’ change.”

James Meade

Source: The balance of payments, 1951, p. 43; As cited in: Metaxas, Phillip Edmund, and Ernst Juerg Weber. Australia's contribution to international trade theory: The dependent economy model. (2013), p. 18

Decision , Change , Country