Epilogue

In this book’s opening chapter we made a case for the study of comparative ‘trajectories of thought’ on international financial integration. We also foreshadowed a distinction between various intellectual trajectories — paths along which ideas may alter and develop over time in response to contemporary circumstances and in the light of applying the key ideas associated with those trajectories to practical problems. The ‘trajectories of thought’ approach embodies three principal assumptions: 1. ideas on the subject of international financial integration, for example how to conceive, effect, retard or manage economic interdependencies between nations, will incorporate deep core philosophical beliefs, economic methodologies (styles of reasoning and evidence collection), grand generalities, core propositions and so forth, that are not easily refutable; 2. ideas change and evolve on the periphery to the extent that inferences are drawn and redrawn to form core propositions in an iterative, interactive feedback process as evidence is gathered from contemporary or past circumstances and as an idea clashes with competing ideas; 3. different ‘trajectories’ of thought may be identified over a time period (in this case the post-BW era from 1971–2000) along which clusters of economists may be aligned and compared; these economists will bear allegiance to common core propositions (doctrines as we have called them), about how the international economy works and how it should work. These clusters of economists will imitate one another or innovate on the periphery of the core proposition in responding to prevailing problems identified in the IFS and to associated controversies over those problems.