Why did monetary authorities hold large gold reserves under Bretton Woods (1944-1971) when only the US had to? We argue … that gold holdings were driven by institutional memory and persistent habits of central bankers. Countries continued to … back currency in circulation with gold reserves, following rules of the pre-WWII gold standard. The longer an institution …

I study whether monetary gold hoarding was the main cause of the Great Depression in a structural VAR analysis. The … monetary disturbances as shocks to central bank gold demand. Based on a monetary DSGE model, the world gold reserve ratio (the … ratio of central bank gold holdings to monetary liabilities) is used to describe monetary conditions. This permits the use …