Who were the great thinkers on international finance in the mid-twentieth century? What did they propose should be done to create a stable international financial order for promoting world trade and ...economic growth?
This important book studies the ideas of some of the most innovative economists in the mid-twentieth century including three Nobel Laureates; great thinkers who helped shape the international financial system and the role of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Covering the period from the late 1940s up until the collapse of the fixed US dollar-gold link in 1971, the impact of Hansen, Williams, Graham, Triffin, Simons, Viner, Friedman, Johnson, Mises, Rueff, Rist, Hayek, Heilperin and Röpke is assessed. This outstanding book will prove invaluable to students studying international economics, economic history and the history of economic thought.
1. Essential Elements of a Doctrinal Approach 2. The Bretton Woods Financial Order: A Distinctive Economic Doctrine 3. Alvin Hansen's Keynesian Interpretation of Bretton Woods 4. John Williams' 'Key Currency' Alternative for the International Financial Order 5. Frank Graham on International Money and Exchange Rates 6. Robert Triffin's Supranational Central Bank: A Plan to Stabilze Liquidity 7. A Chiagoan International Financial Order 8. Reconstructing the International Gold Standard 9. Salvaging the Fixed Exchange Rate Architecture: The Ideas of Roy Harrod and Robert Mundell 10. The Plurality of International Financial Architectures in the BW Era
The Group of Seven major industrial democracies, at their Naples summit in July 1994, decided to consider "What framework of institutions will be required to meet the challenges of the 21st century?" ...and "How can we adapt existing institutions and build new institutions to ensure the future prosperity and security of our people?" This volume presents the results of an Institute conference at which leading experts and policymakers assessed the record of the Bretton Woods regime over the past half century and the need to modernize the system now. Specific proposals are made for reforming the international monetary and trading systems, including through changes in the roles of the International Monetary Fund, GATT and the New World Trade Organization, and the World Bank. The volume also assesses the case for creating new institutional arrangements to address several issues that have recently attained greater prominence on the global agenda--investment, financial markets, the environment, and migration.
Challenging the standard liberal explanations for international cooperation in the field of international relations, this book contends that despite numerous efforts and the passage of time, our ...understanding of the cooperative phenomenon remains woefully inadequate. Sterling-Folker argues that widespread explanatory reliance on what constitutes functionally efficient choices in global interdependence is deductively illogical and empirically unsound. The author’s approach for explaining international cooperation is comprised of realist and constructivist insights and places the state, rather than the market, at the center of analysis. A thorough examination of Post-Bretton Woods American monetary policy-making reveals the fundamental flaws of traditional explanations and the superiority of a realist-constructivist alternative to the cooperative phenomenon.
Coherence and the WTO Winters, L Alan
Oxford review of economic policy,
10/2007, Volume:
23, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Coherence between the WTO and the Bretton Woods Institutions (a formal WTO objective) has achieved some minor goals but has been expensive in terms of direct costs and inefficiencies in policy-making ...and policy debate. The so-called Integrated Framework has achieved relatively little and aid for trade has yet to be fully established. There is little role for the WTO in development and aid policy other than its traditional job of facilitating trade growth, and so its role in aid-for-trade is unclear. Coherence, especially when interpreted as allowing developing countries to avoid trade liberalization in the name of development, has confused and weakened the Doha Round of WTO negotiations. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press
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This article analyses the emergence of the present international monetary system. We first go into the establishment of the Bretton Woods system in the 1940s, its functioning in the post-war period & ...its final breakdown in 1973. We then analyze the ensuing system of floating exchange rates, looking also at the impact of the emerging countries, especially in Asia. We further discuss the interrelationship between the international monetary system & the present financial crisis. Adapted from the source document.
With the ending of Bretton Woods, the financial markets became more unstable & volatile, & this led to more recurrent crisis scenarios that have become increasingly profound. Orthodox theorists have ...sought to predict this type of crisis by means of the so-called first, second & third generation models, but they lack the formulation of analysis & interpretation of financial derivatives, which can modify the behavior of the fundamental variables & interfere with the performance of the monetary & financial authorities, as well as the fulfillment of their objectives. Tables, Graphs, References.
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Since the demise of the Bretton Woods monetary order the IMS has been deprived of common rules. The dollar has kept its dominant international currency status within a patchwork of exchange rate ...regimes that the countries have chosen, depending on the opening of their financial systems. The IMS has de facto become a semi-dollar standard. It has become largely dysfunctional since the spread of financial globalization in the 1990's. It has nurtured the financial crisis in fostering current account balance disequilibria & the subsequent explosion of dollar reserves. Henceforth Asian countries, primarily China, have become paramount holders of US assets. The financial crisis has brought about new prospects to this legacy. China has become the cornerstone of Asian integration in transforming its growth regime. Weaving tight trade links with the emerging market world, China has launched the process leading to Yuan convertibility. Decoupling with the dollar & building loose mechanisms of monetary cooperation in East Asia will become twin goals of foreign monetary policy. Developing an area of common monetary interests in the most dynamic region of the world might change the balance of power in a way that pushed reforms in international monetary governance. Adapted from the source document.
After sixty years, the Bretton Woods Agreement continues to be a reference for the debates concerning institutional organization of the international monetary system. This paper compares some ...features of the arrangements that have emerged in that context with the recent wave of institutional reforms in the international financial architecture. We explore some arguments suggesting that, in an instable financial environment, is possible to envisage a strong rationality in strategies for emerging economies associated with a more active capital flows & exchange rate management. Apparently, those strategies are not dissimilar to the ones today's advanced countries had used in Bretton Woods Era. References. Adapted from the source document.
While agreeing with M. P. Dooley, D. Folkerts-Landau, & P. Garber's (eg, 2003) emphasis on export-led growth in their comparison of today's international financial system with the 1946-1971 Bretton ...Woods regime, that comparison is challenged along with their conclusion that the current system is sustainable for the medium term. It is asserted that the system is prone to crash, highlighting demand-side inadequacies. Attention is also given to the politics of the current system, the future of the dollar's dominant reserve currency status, & a revised system centered on managed exchange rates. Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.
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Economists have debated the causal mechanism by which OPEC policies of the 1970s contributed to the decade's rise in prices overall, but all sides have assumed that U.S. prices indices are ...appropriate for computing the real price of oil. This assumption is mistaken and has led economists to overestimate the benefit that the policies brought to OPEC countries and to ignore the effects that ending the Bretton Woods Agreement had on OPEC policies.
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