Most European countries are rather small, yet we know little about their monetary history. This book analyses for the first time the experience of seven small states (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland) during the last hundred years, starting with the restoration of the gold standard after World War I and ending with Sweden's rejection of the Euro in 2003. The comparative analysis shows that for the most part of the twentieth century the options of policy makers were seriously constrained by a distinct fear of floating exchange rates. Only with the crisis of the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1992-93 did the idea that a flexible exchange rate regime was suited for a small open economy gain currency. The book also analyses the differences among small states and concludes that economic structures or foreign policy orientations were far more important for the timing of regime changes than domestic institutions and policies.

Provides an account of the evolution of exchange rate regimes in the 20th century, in chronological, non-technical format. Links between the past and present shed light on the merits of different exchange rate systems. Discusses forces that have brought about change in order to determine how different regimes affected the economic environment, considers the merits or otherwise of the respective regimes, and assesses arguments for and against fixed and floating exchange ratesAnnotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

During the twentieth century, foreign-exchange intervention was sometimes used in an attempt to solve the fundamental trilemma of international finance, which holds that countries cannot simultaneously pursue independent monetary policies, stabilize their exchange rates, and benefit from free cross-border financial flows. Drawing on a trove of previously confidential data, Strained Relations reveals the evolution of US policy regarding currency market intervention, and its interaction with monetary policy. The authors consider how foreign-exchange intervention was affected by changing economic and institutional circumstances—most notably the abandonment of the international gold standard—and how political and bureaucratic factors affected this aspect of public policy.

This book describes the remarkable path which led to the Swiss Franc becoming the strong international currency that it is today. Ernst Baltensperger and Peter Kugler use Swiss monetary history to provide valuable insights into a number of issues concerning the organization and development of monetary institutions and currency that shaped the structure of financial markets and affected the economic course of a country in important ways. They investigate a number of topics, including the functioning of a world without a central bank, the role of competition and monopoly in money and banking, the functioning of monetary unions, monetary policy of small open economies under fixed and flexible exchange rates, the stability of money demand and supply under different monetary regimes, and the monetary and macroeconomic effects of Swiss Banking and Finance. Swiss Monetary History since the Early 19th Century illustrates the value of monetary history for understanding financial markets and macroeconomics today.

The themes of this study are the exchange rate regimes chosen by policy makers in the twentieth century, the means used to maintain these regimes, and the impact of these decisions on individual national economies and the world economy in general. The book draws heavily on new research showing the lessons and the legacy left for policy makers by the gold standard and the attempt at its resurrection in the 1920s. In examining issues such as the gold exchange standard, the gold bullion standard, the experience of floating exchange rates, the Bretton Woods arrangements, the EMS and the ERM, and the Currency Board approach, there is a conscious attempt to draw out the relevance of history for policy makers now.

Abstract economic theory may be timeless and potentially universal in its application, but macroeconomics has to be seen in its historical context. The nature of the policy regime, the behaviour of the economy and the beliefs of professional economists all interact, and influence each other. This short historical account of monetary regimes since 1900 shows how the role of policy has changed, and how this has related to experience of inflation and the real economy, as well as to changes in political philosophies. The narrative concentrates on developments in America, Europe and Japan from the era of the classical gold standard, via the era of policy intervention and reduced faith in the market to the present 'neo-liberal' regimes. The 'grand narrative' of the century is a journey 'to Utopia and back'. It is argued that no school of macroeconomics is right for all time; different theoretical models may be appropriate, for different periods and regimes.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the world was ready to adopt the gold standard out of concerns of national power, prestige, and anti-English competition. Yet although the gold standard allowed countries to enact a virtual single world currency, the years before World War I were not a time of unfettered liberal economics and one-world, one-market harmony. Outside of Europe, the gold standard became a tool for nationalists and protectionists primarily interested in growing domestic industry and imperial expansion. This overlooked trend, provocatively reassessed in Steven Bryan's well-documented history, contradicts our conception of the gold standard as a British-based system infused with English ideas, interests, and institutions. In countries like Japan and Argentina, where nationalist concerns focused on infant-industry protection and the growth of military power, the gold standard enabled the expansion of trade and the goals of the age: industry and empire. Bryan argues that these countries looked less to Britain and more to North America and the rest of Europe for ideological models. Not only does this history challenge our idealistic notions of the prewar period, but it also reorients our understanding of the history that followed. Policymakers of the 1920s latched onto the idea that global prosperity before World War I was the result of a system dominated by English liberalism. Their attempt to reproduce this triumph helped bring about the global downturn, the Great Depression, and the collapse of the interwar world.