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Professor Wallich said he found that the paper by Professor Pinto Barbosa bore on the hypothesis that a country’s system of preferences depended on its historical experiences. Portugal’s experience was one of monetary, political and economic instability. Recently, Portugal had succeeded in the sense of having a high degree of monetary and political stability, though perhaps at the expense of the rate of growth. Recently, perhaps Portugal’s policies had been too conservative because it was too bent on stable development and stable money. Germany’s preferences came from analogous historical experience. Perhaps what happened in Germany explained the present conditions in the world rather more than what happened in Portugal. Again, one had an experience of inflation and of violent dictatorship, which coloured what many Germans thought about stability and inflation.

Professor Scott said that much of the basic research on Canada’s international position had been done by Professor Eastman. His first theme in this paper was that Canada’s was a very open economy, so that comparative advantage and factor supply position were important. Both present comparative advantages and the tariff policies of other countries led to highly capital-intensive activities, to a heavy draft on Canada’s domestic savings and to big foreign investment — especially from the United States.

My official invitation called for discussion of the papers by Professors Vajda and Nove. I shall make a few occasional references to Professor Khachaturov’s contribution as well.

Professor Hicks said that these were two very serious, important and far from easy papers. He would deal with Professor Cooper’s, which fell into three parts. The first looked at the growth of the international capital market, centring on the figures in Table 9.4. This first part did deal to some extent with the problem of the Euro-dollar and of equities, but the most precise information was for the market for bonds.

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Professor Maurice Bye (France) made the opening comments. He said: These comments are directed to the latter part of Professor Lundberg’s lecture. They are concerned with the relationship between international stability and internal growth. Must growth be checked for the sake of external stability? Many countries have to face this problem, but it does not concern them alone; it is a serious question in a world of unsatisfied needs.