International Financial History in the Twentieth Century: System and Anarchy

by Edited by Marc Flandreau , Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich , Harold James

• ISBN13: 9780521143660
• ISBN10: 0521143667
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-10
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The essays, written by leading experts, examine the history of the international financial system in terms of the debate about globalization and its limits. In the nineteenth century, international markets existed without international institutions. A response to the problems of capital flows came in the form of attempts to regulate national capital markets (for instance through the establishment of central banks). In the inter-war years, there were (largely unsuccessful) attempts at designing a genuine international trade and monetary system; and at the same time (coincidentally) the system collapsed. In the post-1945 era, the intended design effort was infinitely more successful. The development of large international capital markets since the 1960s, however, increasingly frustrated attempts at international control. The emphasis has shifted in consequence to debates about increasing the transparency and effectiveness of markets; but these are exactly the issues that already dominated the nineteenth-century discussions.

Table of Contents

Contributors

Preface

Introduction

Caveat Emptor: coping with sovereign risk under the international gold standard, 1871-1913

Conduits for long-term foreign investment in the gold standard era

The gold-exchange standard: A reinterpretation

The bank of France and the gold standard, 1914-1928

Keynes's road to Bretton Woods: an essay in interpretation

Bretton Woods and the European neutrals, 1944-1973

The 1948 monetary reform in Western Germany

The burden of power: military aspects of international financial relations during the long 1950s

Denationalizing money? Economic liberalism and the 'national question' in currency affairs

International financial institutions and national economic governance: aspects of the new adjustment agenda in historical perspective

Index

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