Abstract
IN an address before the Manchester Statistical Society on March 10, on some essential factors in the evolution of international trade, Prof. A. G. B. Fisher stressed the importance, if we wish to maintain or improve our standard of living, of being prepared constantly to adjust our export activities to meet the probable changes in circumstances arising through changes in the character of employment, and of being constantly on the alert to initiate changes on our own account which are likely to be advantageous to us. British export trade flourished during the nineteenth century because we were able to supply people in other countries with things which they were eager to purchase, and he urged a careful study of the figures for total and expanding exports with reference to other exports. We should consider how best we could prepare to make further adjustments after the War which would be suitable in the different conditions of world demand which will then exist. What is more, we should ensure that those adjustments would be made on a scale sufficiently large to assure us that balance of payments equilibrium at which we must aim. He stated that material progress will be impossible unless there is free admission into the occupations and industries where increased production is necessary to provide consumers with the things without which no increase in their real incomes will be forthcoming. Scientific and technical knowledge have always been the most important factors underlying economic progress, so the basis for the adjustments of the structure of world trade which will in any event be necessary is already available for us to build on. Such considerations are already receiving serious attention in other parts of the world, particularly in Switzerland, where Swiss industry is preparing to meet the new demands which peace will bring to it. Many industrial concerns there are strengthening their technical staff and increasing the number of their scientific collaborators, making resources available for research and constructing laboratories.
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Evolution of International Trade. Nature 151, 500 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151500b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151500b0