ABSTRACT
For most of us in the mainstream of international business today, barter - the exchange of goods against goods - is a thing of the distant past. Of late, to be sure - particularly since the eruption of the debt crisis in the developing world which began to make headlines with the near-default by Mexico in 1982 and since the collapse of the Soviet Union into an array of cash-strapped individual countries there has been a modest revival of money-less transactions in the cross-border flows of goods and services. Even now, though, such deals, important as they are individually, constitute only a tiny fraction of world trade. And given the obstacles involved, which range from the difficulties of proper valuation to the problems of insurance, financing, quality control, after-sales service and finding markets for resale, one must seriously doubt that the proportion will grow very much in the years and decades to come.
