Collected Papers

Book excerpt: The appearance of this volume in the Harvard Economic Studies merits a word of explanation. Metzler's doctoral thesis, "Interregional Income Generation," was accepted by Harvard University in 1942 and awarded the Wells Prize for the year 1944-45. Thus the prize essay now appears in print, vastly enriched by the company of Metzler's later papers, all of which have been lighly edited for consistency. The opening chapter of Metzler's thesis investigated the comparative statics and stability properties of a two-country world with Keynesian internal conditions. The second chapter of Metzler's thesis approached the classic "transfer problem" in the context of a Keynesian two-country model. The extensive final chapter of Metzler's thesis, which had not been published, dealt with financial equilibrium in the context of international capital transfers, augmenting the Keynesian income-equilibrium conditions that underlie the basic analysis of the foreign-trade multiplier with the requirement of equilibrium in the market for securities. Metzler's later work in international economics touched upon a number of topics. One of these was the joint influence of tariffs on the terms of trade and distribution of income, explored in two papers published in 1949. Metzler's contributions have also done much to advance the theory of monetary adjustments in the international economy.