The 1970s were a turbulent period in postwar monetary history. This paper focuses on how central bankers at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), especially Alexandre Lamfalussy, the BIS's Economic Adviser, responded to the Great Inflation. The breakdown of Bretton Woods forced central...

In this paper the vision of the "Young" and "Elder" Lamfalussy on the origins of instability in capitalist economies will be contrasted. The young Lamfalussy found the origins of instability in medium-term cumulative processes in the real sector of the economy, very much inspired by the vicious...

Robert Triffin (1911-1993) was one of the main protagonists in the international monetary debates in the postwar period. He became famous with his book Gold and the Dollar Crisis, published in 1960, in which he predicted the end of the Bretton Woods system. In his analysis there, Triffin was...

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...

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...

Keynesian economics dominated economic thought and macroeconomic policy-making in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the diffusion of Keynesian economics has been uneven. In this paper, we compare the spread of Keynesian economics in two continental European countries: Belgium and Italy. We focus on...

Alexandre Lamfalussy has been highly influential in the process of European monetary and financial unification. In this paper we will analyse the work of the "Young Lamfalussy" (from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s). Lamfalussy started his career as an academic, focusing on growth theory and...

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...