scholarly journals Protection Versus Free Trade in the Free State Era: The Finance Attitude

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Devlin ◽  
Frank Barry

Belief in the benefits of industrial protection had long been a cornerstone of nationalist ideology. Cumann na nGaedheal followed a policy of selective protection while Fianna Fáil was ideologically committed not just to import-substituting industrialisation but to as high a degree of self-sufficiency as possible. The Departments of Finance and Industry and Commerce differed sharply on the costs and benefits of trade restrictions. This article explores the perspective of the Department of Finance and in particular that of J. J. McElligott, Assistant Secretary from 1923 and Secretary of the Department from 1927 to 1953. It demonstrates the strong continuity between his position and that of T. K. Whitaker, who became Secretary in 1956 and whose 1958 report on Economic Development is widely credited with providing the intellectual foundation for the trade liberalisation process of the following decades.

Author(s):  
Eduardo I Palavicini Corona

The XXI century has reached the end of its first 20 years. Along the years, it has posed complex challenges to economists and economic geographers. For example, the results of elections and consultations in different countries have shown a strong sympathy with political positions that question the benefits of free international flows of goods, services, labour and capital. By the same token, some academics argue that despite international economics theory clearly acknowledges that free trade causes winners and losers, the expected higher gains have not been effectively used to compensate the losers. This article explores the main challenges of international economic integration in sub-national territories in Switzerland and Mexico to better understand the importance of delivering relevant and competent public policies based on territorial specificity.


1991 ◽  
Vol 27 (107) ◽  
pp. 250-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Peter Neary ◽  
Cormac Ó Gráda

If I were an Irishman, I should find much to attract me in the economic outlook of your present government towards greater self-sufficiency. (J.M. Keynes)The 1930s were years of political turmoil and economic crisis and change in Ireland. Economic activity had peaked in 1929, and the last years of the Cumann na nGaedheal government (in power since the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922) saw substantial drops in output, trade and employment. The policies pursued after Fianna Fáil’s victory in the election of February 1932 were therefore influenced both by immediate economic pressures and by the party’s ideological commitments. The highly protectionist measures associated with de Valera and Lemass — key men of the new régime — sought both to create jobs quickly and to build more gradually a large indigenous industrial sector, producing primarily for the home market.Political controversy complicated matters. De Valera was regarded as a headstrong fanatic by the British establishment. His government’s refusal to hand over to Britain the so-called ‘land annuities’ — a disputed item in the Anglo-Irish settlement of 1921 — led to an ‘economic war’, in which the British Treasury sought payment instead through penal ‘emergency’ tariffs on Irish imports. The Irish imposed their own duties, bounties and licensing restrictions in turn. The economic war hurt Irish agriculture badly; the prices of fat and store cattle dropped by almost half between 1932 and mid-1935. Farmers got some relief through export bounties and the coal-cattle pacts (quota exchanges of Irish cattle for British coal) of 1935-7, but Anglo-Irish relations were not normalised again until the finance and trade agreements of the spring of 1938, and the resolution of the annuities dispute did not mean an end to protection. The questions ‘Who won the economic war?’ and ‘What was the impact of protection on the Irish economy?’ are analytically distinct, but they are not that easy to keep apart in practice.


2004 ◽  
Vol 43 (4II) ◽  
pp. 943-958
Author(s):  
Indra Nath Mukherji

Preferential trading is one of the mildest forms of an integrative arrangement. Under the arrangement, the Contracting States (CS) offer a preferential margin with respect to trade barriers in relation to their MFN rates. CS having disparate levels of development as well as trade regimes, find this an acceptable instrument for initiating regional trade liberalisation. Such an arrangement nevertheless provides the building blocks towards accelerated regional trade liberalisation culminating in a free trade area within a defined time frame. Under a free trade area the CS eliminate all trade restrictions on their mutual trade, while maintaining restrictions in their trade with non-CS at a level they deem appropriate. When all CS decide on a common external tariff, then the arrangement translates itself in a more cohesive customs union. The arrangement translates to a common market when all CS agree not only to allow free movement of goods and services, but all the factors of production including capital and labour. Finally, the most comprehensive form of an integrative arrangement results from an economic union, which integrates national economic policies of CS and leads to the adoption of a common currency. The Agreement on South Asian Preferential Trading Arrangement (SAPTA), which became operational since December 7th, 1995 thus, symbolises the beginnings of the very first stage of an integrative arrangement among the member countries of SAARC. The decision made at the Twelfth SAARC Summit at Islamabad in January 2004 to launch South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) from January 2006 would mark the second stage of the process of integration in the region. The main focus of this paper is to assess the impact of SAPTA on Indo-Pak trade.


Author(s):  
Alexandre A.F. Rivas ◽  
James R. Kahn

The world is experiencing a major dilemma between the need to reduce global warming and to promote economic development. Brazil has the largest tropical rainforest on the planet, which plays an important role in this scenario. In the heart of this forest there is a special economic zone (SEZ), the Manaus Free Trade Zone. Studies indicate that there is a positive relationship between this economic activity and the level of forest conservation in the state of Amazonas, where the Manaus Free Trade Zone is located. There is important literature on SEZs, examining their economic and environmental impact in general, and specifically examining the Manaus Free Trade Zone. There is also a proposal to turn this SEZ into a major Brazilian economic initiative to protect the Amazon rainforest.


2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81
Author(s):  
E. Arapova

During the 2014 APEC summit the participating countries agreed to move towards a region-wide economic integration and approved China-backed roadmap to promote the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). The paper examines prospects for economic integration in the Asia-Pacific in the framework of 21 APEC participating members. It aims to measure the “integration potential” of the FTAAP on the basis of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the actual statistic data, to explore key obstacles hampering economic integration in the region. The research comes from the theory of convergence and concept of proximity. They suppose that the higher is the degree of homogeneity in economic development and regulatory regimes of the integrating countries the higher is their “integration potential”. The objective of the author’s analysis is to measure the “integration potential” of APEC countries in four directions: trade liberalization, free movement of investments, monetary and banking integration, free division of labor. Initial estimates of the FTAAP prospects base on the merchandize trade complementarity indices and coefficients of variation analysis. Besides, the research uses hierarchical cluster analysis that helps to classify countries in different groups according to similarity of their economic typologies. This methodology allows to reveal the favorable algorithm of regional economic integration in the framework of the “hybrid approach” (or “open regionalism” adopted for APEC countries in 1989) which encourages the countries to enter into free trade agreements on a bilateral basis or to make offers to the APEC membership as a whole. Final conclusions are based on the results of authors’ calculations with consideration for contemporary trends of the member countries’ economic development and long-term strategies of economic growth. Acknowledgements. The research was supported by the Russian Fund for Humanities, project no. 15-07-00026 “East Asian regionalism in the context of diversifi cation of economic growth model”.


2011 ◽  
Vol 225-226 ◽  
pp. 174-177
Author(s):  
Yue Huang

In light of current world economics heading towards a direction that demands a refurbished theoretical guidance, Huang, Mu and Huang’s (1990, 1991) “Overall Development of Global Economics” model - also affectionately known as the "4-ways, 2-forms" hypothesis - serves as a research guideline and a basic framework of economical development problems. Economical development throughout the history of mankind has experienced three phases, each phase bearing its own characteristics. While today’s developing countries linger in the era of nature driven self-sufficiency, developed countries have surged ahead into a phase of post-information economy where information technology serves as the backbone of Information Economic Era. At present, the financial disparities between nations often and inevitably produce conflicts driven by socio-economical differences and the resultant ideologies. What are the orientations in economic development for less developed countries, developing countries and developed countries? Why does conflict between them arise and what causes this? How can they be resolved? These have become focal issues of concern among economist.


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