Central Banks, Financial Systems and Economic Development

摘要

@@A parallel maybe drawn between what has happened with the politics of commercial policy and of that of the role of central banks and financial structures in the modern world.It is well known that today's advanced countries - most notably the United States - started by being vigorously protectionist. Only when having reached a superior stage of development, acceptance of tariff and non-tariff liberalisation became widespread and even so it had its ups and downs depending on the interaction between the performance of the global economy and the pressures from domestic sectors subject to foreign competition. Moreover, once such a superior stage had become consolidated, pressure started to be brought on other countries for them to adopt liberalised commercial policies. An international machinery ended-up being put together (GATT and eventually WTO) instituting the sacrosanct unconditional form of the MostFavoured-Nation clause- prohibiting any quid-pro-quo commercial agreements like those that the U.S. Had liberally applied up to 1923 and again in the last few decades - and engaging underdeveloped countries in negotiations - the various "Rounds" - leading to reductions in import tariffs, elimination of nontariffs, prohibition of subsidies, etc. Normal access to the markets of the advanced countries was made conditional on membership of those international organizations and the elimination of the kind of policies that originally had been applied by the now advanced countries at their own early stages of development like the ones the developing countries were going through.