We present updated estimates of central bank for 100 countries up through 2006 and use them to analyze both the determinants and consequences of monetary policy transparency in an integrated econometric framework. We establish that there has been significant movement in the direction of greater...

This paper examines three interwar exchange rate regimes: the free float of the early 1920s, the fixed rates of 1927-31 and the managed float of the early 1930s. Nominal rates were considerably more variable under free than under managed floating. The reduction in nominal exchange rate...

During the 1980s youth unemployment rates have persistently exceeded unemployment rates for adults, in Britain as in other OECD countries. In the interwar period, youth unemployment rates in Britain were dramatically lower than those for adults. This paper explores possible reasons for the...

The post-World War II reconstruction of Western Europe was one of the greatest economic and foreign policy successes of this century. `Folk wisdom' assigns much of the credit to the Marshall Plan, which transferred some $13 billion of US aid to Europe between 1948 and 1951. We examine the...

Specialists in international relations have argued that international regimes operate smoothly and exhibit stability only when dominated by a single, exceptionally powerful national economy. In particular, this "theory of hegemonic stability" has been applied to the international monetary...

In this paper we speculate about the evolution of the international monetary system in the last two-thirds of the twentieth century absent the Great Depression, but present the major post-Depression political and economic upheavals: World War II and the Cold War. We argue that without the...

This paper summarizes and extends the conclusions of a series of papers on the interwar experience of sovereign borrowing, default and debt readjustment. In explaining the incidence and extent of default, we highlight the importance of a range of factors, both economic and political. We find...