Robert Triffin (1911-1993) played an important role in the international monetary debates in the postwar period. He was known as one of the main advocates of a multipolar international monetary system. In this paper we analyse the origins of Triffin's "regional" approach towards international...

Jacques van Ypersele de Strihou is a discrete person but well-known in Belgian and international political and economic circles. After an outstanding academic career at the Universities of Namur, Leuven and Louvain and then at Yale in the United States where he gained a PhD, he started out his...

Especially with the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, Asian countries have advocated a profound reform of the international financial architecture. Their proposals focused on two main axes: a reform of the global financial system and stronger regional monetary integration in Asia. There are...

Niels Thygesen (born 1934) played for nearly five decades an influential role in the process of economic and monetary integration in Europe. He is especially known as a member of the Delors Committee and as the first Chair of the European Fiscal Board. As part of a research program on collecting...

The establishment of a central bank occurred at very different moments in the process of economic integration in the United States and the European Union. In this paper, we go into the first years of the Federal Reserve System through the lens of Paul van Zeeland's PhD dissertation. Paul van...

EMU is, to a large extent, the result of a process of Franco-German reconciliation and understanding. However, in the postwar period, there were significant differences in ideas and economic policy-making in Germany and France. France was dominated by the "tradition républicaine", giving a...

This paper analyses and compares the roles which Belgium and Italy have played in the process of European monetary integration. It discusses Belgian and Italian attitudes towards European integration and EMU, exchange rate policies, key concepts of the Belgian and Italian EMU strategies and the...

This paper discusses macroeconomic and monetary policy-making at the European Commission, covering the period from the Rome Treaties to the Hague Summit. It is based on an analysis of public documents, archival research and interviews with former policy-makers. The paper starts with an overview...

Among the international policy institutions, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is known for its sensitivity to financial stability issues. Attention to the "macro-prudential" dimension of financial stability is very typical for the BIS. The Bank's macro-prudential approach first came...

In this paper I outline – from a practitioner’s as well as from a researcher’s perspective – several of the key developments that took place during the last century in monetary policy. In particular, I describe how the monetary system evolved from gold standard, prevailing throughout...