It is common wisdom that central banks in the postwar (1945-1970s) period were passive bureaucracies constrained by fixed-exchange rates and inflationist fiscal policies. This view is mostly retrospective and informed by US and UK experiences. This book tells a different story. Eric Monnet shows...

Central banking in France from 1948 to 1973 was a paradigmatic example of an unconventional policy relying on quantities rather than on interest rates. Usual SVAR find no effect of policy shocks and support the common view that monetary policy was ineffective over this period. I argue that only...

Despite France's importance in the interwar world economy, the scale and consequences of the French banking crises of 1930–1931 were never assessed quantitatively due to lack of data in the absence of banking regulation. Using a new dataset of individual balance sheets from more than 400...

Under the classical gold standard (1880-1914), the Bank of France maintained a stable discount rate while the Bank of England changed its rate very frequently. Why did the policies of these central banks, the two pillars of the gold standard, differ so much? How did the Bank of France manage to...