Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T06:49:12.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Imports and Expansion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

M. F. W. Hemming  and
G. F. Ray
M. F. W. Hemming
Affiliation:
National Institute
G. F. Ray
Affiliation:
National Institute
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Any government in this country which pursues a policy of economic expansion needs to consider how big an increase in imports would result from it. It has been suggested that there has been a recent tendency in Britain for imports to rise faster than national output, and that this tendency justified restrictions on expansion in the recent past and may justify further restrictions in the future.

Type
Research Article
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 2 , March 1959 , pp. 26 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © 1959 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

note (1) page 26 See especially K. Lacey, ‘Can we afford to expand ?’ Bankers' Magazine, July 1958.

note (2) page 26 Throughout this article, ‘national output’ is measured by the gross domestic product at 1954 factor cost.

note (1) page 27 This article does not examine the factors underlying the rising import share in the British market for manufactures; it is hoped to do this in a later article.

note (2) page 27 Shipping expenditure (excluding oil tankers) rose from £178 million in 1948 to £430 million in 1957 (£253 million in 1954), but it is not easy to express the change in volume terms because of the lack of an appropriate price index. An estimate obtained as a residual after deflating tourist and government expenditure abroad suggests that the volume of shipping imports may have approximately doubled since 1948, and this is not inconsistent with the fact that the tonnage of foreign ships entering British ports was more than twice as great in 1957 as in 1948.

note (1) page 28 National Income Blue Book, 1958, table 23.

note (2) page 28 Both imports of goods and services and total final demand are calculated here excluding changes in stocks.

note (3) page 28 Assuming import contents stayed as in 1954 in each category of final demand and that each category increased in the way it in fact did, total imports would have risen by 7.5 per cent. But if each category of demand had risen equally, imports, like total demand, would have risen 7.1 per cent. The difference between these two increases, 0.4 per cent, measures the effect of the change in demand pattern.

note (4) page 28 Food is Class A in the Trade Accounts; industrial materials, Class B and Class D/1-13; fuel, Class C; and finished manufactures, Class D/14-23. Throughout this paper import volume figures for 1950 and later years are based on the Board of Trade revaluations of imports at 1954 c.i.f. prices. Figures for earlier years are based on our own revaluations, after making allowance for the rerlassification of imports introduced in 1954.

note (5) page 28 This also includes the import content of food exports. Imported inputs of home agriculture, and drink and tobacco, are considered separately.

note (1) page 37 See M. F. W. Hemming, C. M. Miles and G. F. Ray ‘A Statistical Summary of the Extent of Import Control in the United Kingdom since the War’, Review of Economic Studies, February, 1959.