Product Description

This introduction to international economics stresses the role of economic theory in explaining international trade and finance. It employs a non-mathematical style, and sets out to examine to what extent theory should be allowed to determine economic policy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2139694 in Books
• Published on: 1991-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 500 pages

Customer Reviews

has very broad coverage
This book offers a very broad coverage of this field and is a good introduction if you want a book that is more rigorous than most newer books.

Perhaps I'm nit-picking but I would re-classify this book as 'International Trade' and not 'International Economics': the latter books aim to cover as many different theoretical models as possible and focuses on discussing these models, the former books cover less models and tend to focus on the more practical aspects of trade.
Therefore I think this book would also suit people studying international business, exporting, international finance and so on.

To learn from this book you need to have done a course/book on basic mathematical economics: you need to know what differentials and such are and how to calculate them. Not that you actually have to do any math in this book, but you need to know the concepts.
There are no excercises in this book by the way, just text reading.
So it's a good book to use for revision.

The book has a certain emphasis on the UK economy with its data examples, the US and the rest of Europe are also part of the analysis but not as extensively.

Anyway, the content of the book is this:
1. introduction
2. comparative costs and international trade
3. neo-classical trade theory
4. modern trade theory
5. international trade and welfare
6. methods of protection: tariffs
7. methods of protection: non-tariff
8. arguments for protection in equilibrium
9. arguments for protection in disequilibrium
10. tariffs in the real world
11. customs union
12. European Economic Community
13. factor prices and factor mobility
14. international trade and economic growth
15. capital movements and the multinationals
16. balance of payments
17. national income and the trade balance
18. prices, competitiveness and the current account
19. macro-economics and the current account
20. money and the balance of payments
21. the determination of exchange rates
22. macro-economic policy in the open economy
23. economic adjustment
24. flexible exchange rates and optimum currency areas
25. the demand for international reserves
26. the supply of international money: the past
27. the supply of international money: the present
28. the Euro-currency markets

As you can see the book aims to cover alot of ground in this field of economics, however it does not cover as many theories as later books such as Appleyard's International Economics.
It does however cover the most important theories that every economist should know about: Heckscher-Ohlin, Mundell-Fleming...
If you just want to learn the basics on international economics/trade there is little point in working through huge and extensive books like Appleyard's, it's not as if you'd remember most of the models anyway.
No, I think it's better to work with smaller books and fewer models, this way you can actually remember it all.

I really like these older, more refined and rigorous books on economics, I feel that too many of the newer books published are "dumbed-down" and not very challenging to read.
Books like this one are harder to read and you are advised to keep your own notes as you go though each chapter. But for me this makes me think more about the theory and when you think for yourself about it, and actually work through the theory, you understand it much better in the end.