国际货币与金融经济学instructo’s manual.doc

Chapter 1: Keeping Up With a Changing World-Trade Flows, Capital Flows, and the Balance Of Payments I. Chapter Overview The chapter begins by discussing on the importance of international economic integration, citing recent current events that demonstrate the widely varying opinions of the advantages and disadvantages of international trade and finance. The chapter sets the stage to logically examine these opinions and stresses the need to begin by understanding how international transactions are measured. The second section of the chapter defines the broad concept of globalization which includes increased market integration, the expansion of world governance, and the increased mobility of people and information; and the narrow focus of economic integration, which refers to the strengthening of existing and creation of new international linkages. The chapter then proceeds to distinguish the real and financial sectors that link the worlds economies. Historical data are presented to give a sense of the growth of world trade and transactions in global financial markets during the past few decades. In the third section of the chapter, international balance of payments accounting is described in terms of a double entry bookkeeping system. The components of each of the three major accounts, (1) the current account, (2) the private capital account, and (3) the official settlements balance, are discussed in detail. The usage of the terms balance of payments deficit and balance of payments surplus are equated to a positive official settlements balance and a negative official settlements balance respectively, as distinct from the term overall balance of payments which must be zero by construction. The next section provides a series of concrete examples of international transactions and the ways that these impact the balance of payments accounts. The examples used are: (1) The importation of an automobile, which registers as a debit under current account merchandi