Soviet Foreign Trade and the Money Supply

This study uses newly available data in a quantitative examination of the relationship between Soviet special foreign trade earnings (SFEs) and changes in the money supply. During the Soviet era, SFEs were effectively taxes on imports and exports. They generated as much as 7-15% of state budget revenues in the 1970s and 1980s. The results show that changes in net foreign assets and the money supply accounted for around 10% of SFEs. The remaining 90% of SFEs involve redistribution of existing domestic funds within a constellation of government agencies and state-owned enterprises. The lack of data precluded further exploration of this redistribution