When the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was concluded in the late 1940s, there was hardly any mention of international transactions in services. At that time, the issue of international trade in services was of minor importance. In addition, attention was initially focused on...

Protectionism in international trade, in particular with regard to imports from developing countries, has increased rapidly since the beginning of the 1970s. Dieter Schumacher analyses the reasons for this development and makes some proposals for a liberalization of trade which take the...

Increased trade among the developing countries is often seen as a viable and more gainful alternative to their trade with developed countries. The following article examines trends in the volume, composition and direction of South-South trade since 1970 and addresses the question as to whether...

In the last issue of INTERECONOMICS Nobumitsu Kagami analysed Japan’s behavioural pattern and role in the international monetary sphere. The following complementary article covers the field of the country’s foreign trade.

Proponents of the theory of unequal exchange claim that the international division of labour is based on the exploitation of the developing countries by the industrialised countries. But the international division of labour allows the developing countries to import goods which they either could...

Although there is general agreement on the fact that the new protectionism of the industrialised countries is damaging to developing countries, the majority of the latter show hardly any interest in a return to the classical GATT system. Prof. Körner provides an explanation for this apparently...

International trade data are of great importance to planners in the Third World as well as to academic researchers. They are often considered to be the best economic series available. Just how accurate are these data really?

The world economy has for some time been characterised by a growing generalised trend towards regionalism. This is often considered to be on a par with the formation of blocs, fragmentation of the trading system and a relapse into the disastrous conditions of the thirties. However, if...

Trade between the developing countries and Eastern Europe has been less subjected to analytical scrutiny than trade among other regions. This is partly because the share of this trade in world trade is relatively small, but also because economic information and data on this trade are scarce,...