The balance of payments, money, and economic growth : a feedback mechanism

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1974
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Kwon, Won-Key
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Abstract
On one hand, post-War writings on economic growth and the balance of payments have concentrated on the effects of growth on international payments accounts. On the other hand, literature on monetary growth theory, initiated by Tobin's (1965) seminal article, has been concerned with the role of money in the growth paths of real variables of a closed economy. In these models money is created costlessly through government budget deficits (outside money creation) and/or credit creations of the commercial banking system (inside money creation). In an open economy under a regime of fixed exchange rates, however, the balance of payments position can affect the money supply through a change in foreign reserve holdings which is an important component of the monetary base of the economy. Recognition of the monetary effect of the balance of payments may enable us to integrate the current two separate theories of monetary growth and international payments of an open economy in the growth context. In this dissertation, I formulate a feedback mechanism through which the balance of payments and economic growth interact with each other in a small open economy under a fixed exchange rate system. Such an integration is argued to bridge the gap that exists in the current literature on the two separate theories and thereby gives richer implications for the growth policy. Our open model of the synthesized monetary growth theory is an extension of the existing closed model to a small economy open to international trade and capital movements with the introduction of additional factors pertinent to a small open economy: (1) monetary effect of imbalances in international payments; (2) inflationary pressure in the commodity market resulting from trade imbalances; and (3) the role of international capital inflows in capital accumulation. In this framework, it is shown that capital mobility is crucial in the determination of the short-run stability and the effect of a change in the growth rate of foreign reserve holdings on the steady state capital intensity. Under perfect capital mobility, the loss of freedom to change the nominal rate of interest is the main source of short-run instability. In the open model of the synthesized monetary growth theory, compared with closed model, the degree of the "openness" of the economy is also crucial for the short-run stability. Under capital immobility monetary growth resulting from the foreign source of monetary assets has the same steady state effect on capital intensity as under a closed model; whereas under capital mobility the steady state effect of such monetary growth on capital intensity is ambiguous, depending, to a significant degree, on the real balance effect in domestic expenditures. On the basis of a general equilibrium model, we used portfolio adjustment theory of international payments in order to generalize and extend the Komiya-Mundellian analysis of the effect of economic growth on the balance of payments accounts. In sharp contrast to the results obtained from traditional Keynesian analysis, it is shown that economic growth, as a process of capital deepening over time, tends to improve both the overall and the trade balances in per capita real terms with deterioration on the capital account. The assumption on capital mobility is not crucial in the qualitative determination of this "impact" effect of economic growth on international payments accounts, but is significant only for the quantitative measurement of the intensities of the effect.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1974.
Bibliography: leaves 155-162.
viii, 162 leaves ill
Keywords
Balance of payments -- Mathematical models, Money -- Mathematical models, Economic development -- Mathematical models
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Theses for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (University of Hawaii at Manoa). Economics; no. 635
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