The growth of international interdependence has increased the number of ways in which the activities of economic decision-makers in one national economy impinge on those in another as well as the size of the effects. In short-term economic management, the most powerful remain trade, monetary flows and exchange rates, but in recent years the freeing of capital flows and the growing role of international banks have greatly increased the relative importance of the second two; greater emphasis on monetary economics and the role of expectations, combined with increasing empirical evidence of the slow response of trade to relative prices have affected perceptions of their relative effects. Partly for these reasons, but also because of growing domestic emphasis on monetary policy and sectoral programmes, the extent and forms of government intervention affecting the three variables have altered.