The need for special arrangements, 500. — Feasibility of organizing systems of multilateral payments, 502. — Fundamental problems, 503. — Clearing mechanisms: pooling type, 506. — Clearing mechanisms: multilateral offset or circuit type, 510. — The settlement of net balances, 513. — Multilateral clearing and the ERP, 516.

I. Three approaches to the problem of international currency stability, 563. — II. What is a key currency? 567. — Importance of non-key currencies, 567; of stable relations between currencies, 569. — Other postwar currency problems overlooked, 570. — Uncertainty regarding proposed stabilization agreement between United States and Great Britain, 571. — The problem of exchange restrictions after the war, 572. — Many currencies are key currencies from standpoint of certain commodities, 574. — III. Alternatives facing nations of the world, 576.

Journal Article Oligopoly and the Short-Run Demand for Labor Get access Raymond F. Mikesell Raymond F. Mikesell The University of Washington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 55, Issue 1, November 1940, Pages 161–166, https://doi.org/10.2307/1881672 Published: 01 November 1940

NON-discrimination and multilateral payments represent the foundations of United States foreign trade and exchange policy. The United States has sought to implement this policy through multilateral agreements, such as the International Monetary Fund Agreement and the Charter for an International Trade Organization, and through bilateral agreements, such as the Anglo-American Financial Agreement.' Most American economists and statesmen consider the universal desirability of nondiscrimination to be a self-evident truth readily deducible from the first principles of economics. But in recent years a number of reputable economists have come forth with strong arguments in favor of trade and exchange discrimination, and these arguments have had an important influence on the formation of international economic policy. It is not enough for economists of the free-trade school to refute these arguments by an application of the principles of classical economics, since the proponents of trade discrimination usually begin by denying the classical postulates.2 Rather the problem must be examined within the institutional framework of the postwar world and its solution worked out in a manner consistent with current economic and political realities. Although the economist would be derelict if he assumed the world as it currently exists as inevitable and incapable of change in response to his counsel, mere deduction from first principles is not likely to solve its problems. The purpose of this paper therefore is to analyze the case for discrimination as objectively and sympathetically as possible, with a view to determining the extent to which the problems that the proponents of discrimination have posed can be dealt with a minimum of violence to the wellknown advantages of non-discriminatory and multilateral trade.

Official gold sales in the Middle East for the express purpose of combating inflation were inaugurated in Iran in June 1943; in Iraq, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Syria, and the Lebanon in August 1943; and in Egypt in November I943. Official sales were discontinued in June 1944 in all of the above countries with the exception of Iran where they were continued into the fall of I944. Official gold sales in Bombay, India, began in August 1943 and were continued until April I945.2 Just how effective gold sales in the Middle East and India have been is difficult to determine. Nowhere have the proceeds from such sales accounted for more than a fraction of the