The classical gold standard era from 1880 to 1914, when most countries of the world defined their currencies in terms of a fixed weight (which is equivalent to a fixed price) of gold and hence adhered to a fixed exchange rate standard, has been regarded by many observers as a most admirable...

Using a set of standard success criteria, we show that Riksbank foreign-exchange interventions between 1993 and 2002 lacked forecast value; that is, the observed number of successes was not significantly greater - and usually substantially smaller - than the number one would anticipate given the...

This lecture revisits the evidence on the incidence and severity of different varieties of financial crises within the context of globalization then (pre-1914) and now (1980 to the present). I then discuss the determinants of emerging market crises from the perspective of the recent balance...

This lecture revisits the evidence on the incidence and severity of different varieties of financial crises within the context of globalization then (pre-1914) and now (1980 to the present). I then discuss the determinants of emerging market crises from the perspective of the recent balance...

In this paper, we examine three famous episodes of deliberate deflation (or disinflation) in U.S. history, including episodes following the Civil War, World War I, and the Volcker disinflation of the early 1980s. These episodes were associated with widely divergent effects on the real economy,...

In this paper we argue that adherence to the gold standard rule of convertibility of national currencies into a fixed weight of gold served as `a good housekeeping seal of approval' which facilitated access by peripheral countries to foreign capital from the core countries of western Europe. We...

Over the past decade and a half Axel Leijonhufvud has written extensively on monetary regimes and their connection to nominal and real economic performance. Monetary regimes are important because they determine whether countries follow stable or unstable monetary policies and hence have stable...

We reinterpret the commonly held view in the U.S. that France, by following a policy from 1965 to 1968 of deliberately converting their dollar holdings into gold helped perpetuate the collapse of the Bretton Woods International Monetary System. We argue that French international monetary policy...

Theories of rules and discretion have become a corner stone in the formulation of macroeconomic policy. They suggest that monetary policy rules are first best in terms of social welfare. However, if commitment is not feasible, delegating monetary policy to an independent and conservative central...