The objective is to determine the causes of the countercyclicality of the trade balance in five small open economies, namely Austria, France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. In order to investigate the role of permanent and temporary changes in income in the determination of the trade balance,...

The objectives of this study were (a) to determine the degree to which hard currency earnings constrained overall imports and coarse grain imports in command economies; (b) to measure the importance of import prices on grain imports and to trace the link of grain availability to meat production;...