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THE BILATERAL CHARACTER OF SOVIET AND EASTERN EUROPEAN FOREIGN TRADE
Author(s) -
McMillan C. H.
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
jcms: journal of common market studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.54
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1468-5965
pISSN - 0021-9886
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5965.1974.tb00711.x
Subject(s) - character (mathematics) , international trade , political science , economics , mathematics , geometry
SUMMARY This paper examines the empirical evidence for bilateralism in the recent trade of the Comecon countries and analyses its sources in socialist foreign trade planning and practice. Particular reference is made to the Soviet experience; and since economic size and degree of industrialization Five been found to act as important determinants of a country's aggregate index of bilateralism, comparisons are drawn between the Soviet and US trade patterns. While there is some evidence of unusual bilateralism in Soviet trade as a whole, the results show for both the Soviet Union and the US a marked variance depending upon the monetary region with which trade is conducted. The evidence suggests that it is the constraints imposed by ‘currency’ and ‘commodity’ inconvertibility in trade with the Comecon countries which large by explain the bilateral nature of Soviet trade in the aggregate. The analysis is then extended to trade among all the Comecon countries, and Comecon efforts to multi‐lateralize regional trade are found to have been, through 1970, unsuccessful.