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DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL MONEY: THE QUESTION OF CURRENCY INTERNATIONALIZATION FROM BRETTON WOODS TO THE 1970S

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2017

Anthony M. Endres
Anthony M. Endres*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Auckland, Private Mail Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand. a.endres@auckland.ac.nz.
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Abstract

In the Bretton Woods era the controversy over cross-border use of national monies turned on how to create ‘symmetries’ and avoid significant ‘asymmetries’ in the way national currencies shared specific international currency functions. We examine the twentieth-century work of prominent economists on the nature, choice, and functions of international currencies. Prescriptive approaches to international currency formation are considered, beginning with the discussion of the Bretton Woods plans, followed by doctrinal developments stimulated by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Why are those developments instructive, given recent revisitation of the currency internationalization question in modern international monetary thought and policy? The modern revival of this question resembles a rehabilitation and restatement of earlier controversies, though it underestimates the gradual encroachment of the idea of international currency competition. This idea came to dominate other doctrines from the 1970s; it accommodates the ongoing adaptation of national currencies to the full range of international currency functions.

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Articles
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Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 429 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2017 

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