The International Adjustment Mechanism: From the Gold Standard to the EMS

This study is about the history of thought and policy on the international adjustment mechanism - the changing conceptions about what economic forces come into play to adjust economies to external disequlibria, for example - payments surpluses and deficits or exchange-rate misalignments. Economics emerged as a discipline in its own right largely out of the accumulated reflections, analyses and judgements of a group of writers from the 16th to the early-19th centuries who shared a common perspective on matters relating to the adjustment of the balance of payments. The present survey starts with the developments of the doctrine at that time, and continues the story up to the present debate on economic and monetary union in Europe. Other books by Leonard Gomes includes "International Economics Problems", "Foreign Trade and the National Economy: Mercantilist and Classical Perspectives" and "Neoclassical International Economics: An Historical Survey".