Balance of Payments Theory

Abstract

In her authoritative 1969 survey of balance of payments theory, Anne Krueger observed that ‘there is no theory of international monetary economies’, only a cluster of theories bearing on particular aspects of international monetary problems.¹ The position remains the same since Krueger wrote; no all-embracing tightly knit theory has emerged. Despite a great deal of technical sophistication, we are still at the level of ‘approaches’ (at least three) when it comes to the analysis of international monetary problems. This seems at first sight a trifle odd, since as John Chipman reminds us: ‘The emergence of economic science in Great Britain in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries was to some extent an offshoot of the development of the theory of adjustment of the balance of payments.’²