With the publication of this volume the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, a private Argentine research organization, makes available for a specialized Spanish-reading public the 1962 monograph of the British economist A. G. Ford. The present edition is a faithful rendering of the original with the addition of a brief prologue by the Argentine economist Aldo Ferrer. Individuals in this country who possess the Clarendon Press edition should feel no urgency to acquire the version under review.
Lest anyone be misled by the title, this book is not a history of economic relations between Britain and Argentina, and its primary concern is with economic theories. Ford sets out to examine within a specific historical period the relationship of the monetary system to the balance of payments in two different countries, one advanced, the other developing. This he does with a view to determining the adequacy of traditional explanations of the gold standard system. His study makes clear that a single generalized model, based largely on the experience of an advanced country, is inadequate to explain the actual historic phenomena in a peripheral country.
For the student of Argentine history, the chapters dealing with the Argentine banking system and with the varied experiences with convertible and inconvertible currencies will have the greatest interest. As Ford makes plain, the gold standard succeeded at one time and failed at another in Argentina, not because of any intrinsic “rules of the game,” but because the country was largely dependent on external factors for her economic well-being and because the basic policy decisions were made by the ruling landed sector which consulted its own interests in placing the country on or off the gold standard. This study, therefore, should serve to strengthen the case of the “structuralists” as against the “monetarists” in their search for remedies to present-day economic ills.
