International Economics

International Economics is unique despite the existence of numerous books of the same title. It is true that no one volume can capture the entire state of the art of the subject, but individuals can apply their own perspectives to identify crucial issues in the development of the field. Therefore, rather than instructions to prepare "surveys" of subfields within international economics, the contributors to this book were informed as follows: Your essay should present an affirmative but constructively critical look at your subject. It is not meant to be a survey. Rather, your task is to pinpoint crucial areas of development, to offer a critical evaluation of what's going on in the field and where it might go. Your contribution would be your own personal statement of how you see things. It should be written at the professional level. Beyond these general guidelines, you may develop your essay as you see fit. How much of "international economics" should be assigned to each author and how many contributions the book should have, required careful consideration. Traditionally, international economics has been divided into pure theory and monetary theory, suggesting a simple division of the field; but this dichotomy has been overturned by the emergence of litera­ ture that overlaps both theories. An opposite approach would have been to separate international economics into twelve to fifteen areas, each with a contributor. This procedure divides the field into too many parts and, consequently, overlapping threads of development would be ignored.