IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/824.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Payments Mechanism for the Former Soviet Union: Is the EPU a Relevant Precedent?

Author

Listed:
  • Eichengreen, Barry

Abstract

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the trade of its successor states has spiralled downward. The European Payments Union of the 1950s is frequently invoked as a model for solving this problem. In this paper I show that in fact the EPU is an inappropriate framework for organizing the former Soviet Union's trade and payments. The only multilateral clearing union that is feasible prior to stabilization is one based on continuous multilateral balance among the participating countries. Such an arrangement is identical in its essentials to current account convertibility. In effect, then, the only choices available to the former Soviet Union prior to stabilization are bilateralism and convertibility. I make the case for convertibility and against current proposals for an Interstate Bank.

Suggested Citation

  • Eichengreen, Barry, 1993. "A Payments Mechanism for the Former Soviet Union: Is the EPU a Relevant Precedent?," CEPR Discussion Papers 824, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:824
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=824
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Barry Eichengreen., 1993. "International Monetary Arrangements for the 21st Century," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers C93-021, University of California at Berkeley.
    2. Barry Eichengreen., 1994. "History and Reform of the International Monetary System," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers C94-041, University of California at Berkeley.
    3. Valeriya Dinger & Sven Steinkamp & Frank Westermann, 2014. "The Tragedy of the Commons and Inflation Bias in the Euro Area," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 71-91, February.
    4. Groshek, Gerald, 1997. "The Czech and Slovak Clearing Agreement: a post-mortem," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 171-184, July.
    5. Schoors, Koen, 2003. "The effect of Soviet monetary disintegration on the collapse of trade between members of the Commonwealth of Independent States," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 1-26, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Former Soviet Union; Payments; Trade;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F02 - International Economics - - General - - - International Economic Order and Integration
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:824. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.