Why should each country have its own exclusive currency? Eric Helleiner offers a fascinating and unique perspective on this question in his accessible history of the origins of national money. Our contemporary understandings of national currency are, Helleiner shows, surprisingly recent. Based on standardized technologies of production and extraction, territorially exclusive national currencies emerged for the first time only during the nineteenth century. This major change involved a narrow definition of legal tender and the exclusion of tokens of value issued outside the national territory. "Territorial currencies" rapidly became bound up with the rise of national markets, and money reflected basic questions of national identity and self-presentation: In what way should money be managed to serve national goals? Whose pictures should go on the banknotes? Helleiner draws out the potent implications of this largely unknown history for today's context. Territorial currencies face challenges from many monetary innovations—the creation of the euro, dollarization, the spread of local currencies, and the prospect of privately issued electronic currencies. While these challenges are dramatic, the author argues that their significance should not be overstated. Even in their short historical life, territorial currencies have never been as dominant as conventional wisdom suggests. The future of this kind of currency, Helleiner contends, depends on political struggles across the globe, struggles that echo those at the birth of national money.

How does globalization work? Focusing on Latin America, Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth show that exports of expertise and ideals from the United States to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico have played a crucial role in transforming their state forms and economies since World War II. Based on more than 300 extensive interviews with major players in governments, foundations, law firms, universities, and think tanks, Dezalay and Garth examine both the production of northern exports such as neoliberal economics and international human rights law and the ways they are received south of the United States. They find that the content of what is exported and how it fares are profoundly shaped by domestic struggles for power and influence—"palace wars"—in the nations involved. For instance, challenges to the eastern intellectual establishment influenced the Reagan-era export of University of Chicago-style neoliberal economics to Chile, where it enjoyed a warm reception from Pinochet and his allies because they could use it to discredit the previous regime. Innovative and sophisticated, The Internationalization of Palace Wars offers much needed concrete information about the transnational processes that shape our world.

A cutting-edge look at how accelerating financial change, from the end of cash to the rise of cryptocurrencies, will transform economies for better and worse. We think weÕve seen financial innovation. We bank from laptops and buy coffee with the wave of a phone. But these are minor miracles compared with the dizzying experiments now underway around the globe, as businesses and governments alike embrace the possibilities of new financial technologies. As Eswar Prasad explains, the world of finance is at the threshold of major disruption that will affect corporations, bankers, states, and indeed all of us. The transformation of money will fundamentally rewrite how ordinary people live. Above all, Prasad foresees the end of physical cash. The driving force wonÕt be phones or credit cards but rather central banks, spurred by the emergence of cryptocurrencies to develop their own, more stable digital currencies. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies themselves will evolve unpredictably as global corporations like Facebook and Amazon join the game. The changes will be accompanied by snowballing innovations that are reshaping finance and have already begun to revolutionize how we invest, trade, insure, and manage risk. Prasad shows how these and other changes will redefine the very concept of money, unbundling its traditional functions as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value. The promise lies in greater efficiency and flexibility, increased sensitivity to the needs of diverse consumers, and improved market access for the unbanked. The risk is instability, lack of accountability, and erosion of privacy. A lucid, visionary work, The Future of Money shows how to maximize the best and guard against the worst of what is to come.

This comprehensive book traces the role of money in the creation of the state. Starting in the early modern era, Paul Wilson explores the monetary systems of empires and new states in the age of nation-building in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Spanning a wide geographical and historical range from the creation of the United States of America to the establishment of the European Union and the breakup of the Soviet Union and beyond, the author examines changing attitudes toward monetary sovereignty as dozens of new states created new currencies since the end of the Second World War. Wilson analyzes the decision–making of newly independent states in their choice of an appropriate currency, considering the complex factors involved—ranging from the purely economic to questions of security, international recognition, and outright nationalism that have played a part. The author challenges the notion that each country must necessarily have its own currency and explains why some newly independent countries have chosen to adopt the currency of another state. Citing the examples of international currency unions of the nineteenth century and the present day, he contends that sharing a currency does not represent a surrender of political sovereignty. Instead, Wilson argues for a more rational attitude toward money as a facilitator of transactions rather than as a symbol of national identity.

Eric Helleiner's new book provides a powerful corrective to conventional accounts of the negotiations at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. These negotiations resulted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—the key international financial institutions of the postwar global economic order. Critics of Bretton Woods have argued that its architects devoted little attention to international development issues or the concerns of poorer countries. On the basis of extensive historical research and access to new archival sources, Helleiner challenges these assumptions, providing a major reinterpretation that will interest all those concerned with the politics and history of the global economy, North-South relations, and international development. The Bretton Woods architects—who included many officials and analysts from poorer regions of the world—discussed innovative proposals that anticipated more contemporary debates about how to reconcile the existing liberal global economic order with the development aspirations of emerging powers such as India, China, and Brazil. Alongside the much-studied Anglo-American relationship was an overlooked but pioneering North-South dialogue. Helleiner’s unconventional history brings to light not only these forgotten foundations of the Bretton Woods system but also their subsequent neglect after World War II.

This paper marks the launch of a new IMF series, Fintech Notes. Building on years of IMF staff work, it will explore pressing topics in the digital economy and be issued periodically. The series will carry work by IMF staff and will seek to provide insight into the intersection of technology and the global economy. The Rise of Digital Money analyses how technology companies are stepping up competition to large banks and credit card companies. Digital forms of money are increasingly in the wallets of consumers as well as in the minds of policymakers. Cash and bank deposits are battling with so-called e-money, electronically stored monetary value denominated in, and pegged to, a currency like the euro or the dollar. This paper identifies the benefits and risks and highlights regulatory issues that are likely to emerge with a broader adoption of stablecoins. The paper also highlights the risks associated with e-money: potential creation of new monopolies; threats to weaker currencies; concerns about consumer protection and financial stability; and the risk of fostering illegal activities, among others.