A Europe Made of Money is a new history of the making of the European Monetary System (EMS), based on extensive archive research. Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol highlights two long-term processes in the monetary and economic negotiations in the decade leading up to the founding of the EMS in 1979. The first is a transnational learning process involving… Continue reading
In the 1950s the sterling area (35 countries and colonies pegged to sterling and holding primarily sterling reserves) accounted for half of world trade and sterling accounted for over half of world foreign exchange reserves. In the early post-war years, this share was even higher – the IMF estimated that official sterling reserves, excluding those… Continue reading
The 1930s Chatham House Study Group on ‘The International Gold Problem’ and the 2011 Chatham House Taskforce on ‘Gold and the International Monetary System’ The economic context of the 1930s Chatham House Study Group was in many ways very different from the modern-day Chatham House Taskforce, of which I am a member, but the focus… Continue reading
After 1945, the regulation of international financial markets became more intense and widespread as part of the system designed to avoid the chaos that had characterised international economic relations in the 1930s. This paper examines how the post-war consensus about the usefulness of regulating capital flows evolved after the advent of current account convertibility in… Continue reading
Hong Kong is usually seen as a laissez-faire paradise for international business. This chapter draws on archival sources to show that, contrary to this image, the internationalisation of the banking sector was highly contested both by large local banks and by government regulators. Large banks such as HSBC and Chartered Bank sought to protect their… Continue reading
Professor Catherine Schenk presented a paper on multiple reserve currencies: How have multiple reserve currencies functioned in the past? Why were the rules-based adjustment indicator and the substitution account abandoned in the past? The paper can be downloaded here. Image source: http://www.imf.org/external/np/adm/pictures/images/bldextm.jpg
Central Bankers from the Failure of the Werner Plan to the creation of the EMS, 1974-1979 This article focuses on the role of central bankers in European monetary cooperation, from the failure of the Werner Plan to the creation of the European Monetary System (EMS). The role of central bankers in the run-up to the… Continue reading
Integrating an International Political Economy Dimension into European Integration History: the Challenges of the 1970s For anyone interested in international political economy (IPE), the fact that European integration is embedded in global influences is, arguably, a given. Economic and monetary phenomena do not really know borders – or at least not in the same way… Continue reading
Are we bad students or do we have poor teachers: why don’t we learn the lessons from previous crises? The global financial crisis of 2007/8 revealed many flaws in the system of regulating and supervising the international banking and financial system. This article shows that most of these flaws had been recognised in earlier… Continue reading
Governance of Governors: the 1974 international banking crisis and the early deliberations of the Basel Committee The 2007 global financial crisis exposed a range of weaknesses in the fabric of prudential supervision both at national and international level. Given the failure of the Basel Committee framework to develop effective rules that can be implemented… Continue reading
