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

Barry Eichengreen

No 824, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

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.

Keywords: Former Soviet Union; Payments; Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F02 F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=824 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:824

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... pers/dp.php?dpno=824

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().