Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- 2 The Gold Standard -- Prehistory -- The Dilemmas of Bimetallism -- The Lure of Bimetallism -- The Advent of the Gold Standard -- Shades of Gold -- How the Gold Standard Worked -- The Gold Standard as a Historically Specific Institution -- International Solidarity -- The Gold Standard and the Lender of Last Resort -- Instability at the Periphery -- The Stability of the System -- 3 Interwar Instability -- Chronology -- Experience with Floating: The Controversial Case of the Franc -- Reconstructing the Gold Standard -- The New Gold Standard -- Problems of the New Gold Standard -- The Pattern of International Payments -- Responses to the Great Depression -- Banking Crises and Their Management -- Disintegration of the Gold Standard -- Sterling's Crisis -- The Dollar Follows -- Managed Floating -- Conclusions -- 4 The Bretton Woods System -- Wartime Planning and Its Consequences -- The Sterling Crisis and the Realignment of European Currencies -- The European Payments Union -- Payments Problems and Selective Controls -- Convertibility: Problems and Progress -- Special Drawing Rights -- Declining Controls and Rising Rigidity -- The Battle for Sterling -- The Crisis of the Dollar -- The Lessons of Bretton Woods -- 5 After Bretton Woods -- Floating Exchange Rates in the 1970s -- Floating Exchange Rates in the 1980s -- The Snake -- The European Monetary System -- Renewed Impetus for Integration -- Europe's Crisis -- Understanding the Crisis -- The Experience of Developing Countries -- Conclusions -- 6 A Brave New Monetary World -- The Asian Crisis -- Emerging Instability -- Global Imbalances -- The Euro -- International Currency Competition -- 7 A Decade of Crises -- From Subprime Crisis to Global Financial Crisis -- Greece's Crisis -- The Grexit Option -- Europe's Crisis.

Titelei -- Inhalt -- Einführung -- Teil I Die beste aller Zeiten -- Kapitel 1 Eine »Neue Ära« für die Wirtschaft -- Kapitel 2 Gold und die Welt -- Kapitel 3 Gewalttätiger Wettbewerb -- Kapitel 4 Per Gesetz oder Erlass -- Kapitel 5 Solange die Musik noch spielt -- Kapitel 6 Luftschlösser in Spanien -- Teil II Die schlechteste aller Zeiten -- Kapitel 7 Verschossene Kugeln -- Kapitel 8 Die nächste Abwärtsbewegung -- Kapitel 9 An europäischen Ufern -- Kapitel 10 Fällt auch Amerika? -- Kapitel 11 Weitgehend begrenzt -- Kapitel 12 Spärliche Belege -- Kapitel 13 Die Spirale -- Kapitel 14 Fisch oder Fleisch? -- Teil III Auf dem Weg zu ­besseren Zeiten -- Kapitel 15 Erholung oder Reformen -- Kapitel 16 Für jeden etwas -- Kapitel 17 Takahashis Rache -- Kapitel 18 Das nächste Abtauchen -- Kapitel 19 Das Schlimmste verhindern -- Kapitel 20 Gestresst und stimuliert -- Kapitel 21 Unkonventionelle Maßnahmen -- Teil IV Ein nächstes Mal verhindern -- Kapitel 22 Wall Street und Main Street -- Kapitel 23 Normalisierung in einer unnormalen Wirtschaft -- Kapitel 24 Alles möglichst schwierig machen -- Kapitel 25 Männer in Schwarz -- Kapitel 26 Euro oder nicht -- Fazit -- Dramatis Personae - Die Besetzung -- Danksagung -- Anmerkungen -- Quellen- und Literaturverzeichnis -- Über den Autor.

The Great Depression and the Great Recession are the two great economic crises of the past hundred years. In Hall of Mirrors, Barry Eichengreen draws on his unparalleled expertise for a brilliantly conceived dual-track account of the two crises and their consequences. He describes how the "lessons" of the Great Depression importantly shaped the policy response to the recent crisis, for both better and worse, but also how the recent crisis will re-shape our understanding of the Depression.

"While India is distinctive among developing countries for its fast-growing service sector, sceptics have raised doubts about the quality and sustainability of this service-sector growth and its implications for economic development. We show, consistent with the views of the sceptics, that while growth of the sector has been unusually rapid, it started 15 years ago from unusually low levels. That the share of services has now simply converged to the international norm raises questions about whether it will continue growing rapidly. In particular, whether service-sector output and employment continue to grow in excess of international norms will depend on the continued expansion of modern services (business services, communication and banking) but, also, on the application of modern information technology to more traditional services (retail and wholesale trade, transport and storage, public administration and defense ). The second aspect obviously has more positive implications for output than for employment. We also show that the modern services that are growing most rapidly are now large enough where their future performance could have a significant macroeconomic impact. The expansion of modern service-sector employment is not simply disguised manufacturing activity. Finally, we show that the mix of skilled and unskilled labor in manufacturing and services is increasingly similar. It is no longer obvious therefore that manufacturing is the main destination for the vast majority of Indian labor moving into the modern sector and that modern services are a viable destination only for the highly-skilled few. We conclude that sustaining economic growth and raising living standards will require shifting labor into both manufacturing and services"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"Using international data starting in 1957, we construct a sample of cases where fast-growing economies slow down. The evidence suggests that rapidly growing economies slow down significantly, in the sense that the growth rate downshifts by at least 2 percentage points, when their per capita incomes reach around $17,000 US in year-2005 constant international prices, a level that China should achieve by or soon after 2015. Among our more provocative findings is that growth slowdowns are more likely in countries that maintain undervalued real exchange rates"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"This paper places current efforts at international economic policy coordination in historical perspective. It argues that successful cooperation is most likely in four sets of circumstances. First, when it centers on technical issues. Second, when cooperation is institutionalized - when procedures and precedents create presumptions about the appropriate conduct of policy and reduce the transactions costs of reaching an agreement. Third, when it is concerned with preserving an existing set of policies and behaviors (when it is concerned with preserving a policy regime). Fourth, when it occurs in the context of broad comity among nations. These points are elaborated through a review of 150 years of historical experience and then used to assess the scope for cooperative responses to the current economic crisis"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"We describe in this essay why the gold standard and the euro are extreme forms of fixed exchange rates, and how these policies had their most potent effects in the worst peaceful economic periods in modern times. While we are lucky to have avoided another catastrophe like the Great Depression in 2008-9, mainly by virtue of policy makers' aggressive use of monetary and fiscal stimuli, the world economy still is experiencing many difficulties. As in the Great Depression, this second round of problems stems from the prevalence of fixed exchange rates. Fixed exchange rates facilitate business and communication in good times but intensify problems when times are bad"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"We present new evidence on the currency composition of foreign exchange reserves in the 1920s and 1930s. Contrary to the presumption that the pound sterling continued to dominate the U.S. dollar in central bank reserves until after World War II, we show that the dollar first overtook sterling in the mid-1920s. This suggests that the network effects thought to lend inertia to international currency status and to create incumbency advantages for the dominant international currency do not apply in the reserve currency domain. Our new evidence is similarly incompatible with the notion that there is only room in the market for one dominant reserve currency at a point in time. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of interwar monetary history but also for the prospects of the dollar and the euro as reserve currencies"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"Alexander Swoboda is one of the originators of the bipolar view that capital mobility creates pressure for countries to abandon intermediate exchange rate arrangements in favor of greater flexibility and harder pegs. This paper takes another look at the evidence for this hypothesis using two popular de facto classifications of exchange rate regimes. That evidence supports the bipolar view for the advanced countries, the sample for which it was originally developed, but not obviously for emerging markets and other developing countries. One interpretation of the contrast is that there is a tendency to move away from intermediate regimes in the course of economic and financial development, implying that emerging markets and other developing countries will eventually abandon intermediate regimes as well. Another interpretation is that the advanced countries have been faster to abandon soft pegs because they have been faster to develop attractive alternatives, notably Europe's monetary union. In this view, other countries are unlikely to abandon soft pegs because of the absence of the distinctive political conditions that have made the European alternative feasible. A final interpretation is that the advanced countries have been able to abandon soft peg because of their success in substituting inflation targeting for exchange rate targeting as the anchor for monetary policy. The paper presents some evidence for this view, which suggests the feasibility of further movement by emerging markets and developing countries in the direct of greater exchange rate flexibility"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- LIST OF FIGURES -- LIST OF TABLES -- PREFACE -- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS -- ONE. Introduction -- TWO. Mainsprings of Growth -- THREE. The Postwar Situation -- FOUR. Dawn of the Golden Age -- FIVE. Eastern Europe and the Planned Economy -- SIX. The Integration of Western Europe -- SEVEN. The Apex of the Golden Age -- EIGHT. Mounting Payments Problems -- NINE. Declining Growth, Rising Rigidities -- TEN. The Collapse of Central Planning -- ELEVEN. Integration and Adjustment -- TWELVE. Europe at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century -- THIRTEEN. The Future of the European Model -- APPENDIX. Sources of Growth -- REFERENCES -- INDEX