IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-349-01521-4_1.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Problems Perceived in the International Financial System

In: Bretton Woods Revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Roy Harrod

Abstract

I have little doubt that the birth of the two great institutions at Bretton Woods will be recorded in history as a notable landmark in human affairs. The progress towards more orderly international relations on a world scale, and towards having institutions particularly adapted to maintaining such relations, will surely proceed, whatever setbacks we may still have to face on the forward journey. At some future time historians will look back to the state of affairs when the world was divided into a number of independent sovereign states as a curious episode. I hasten to add that I do not believe that mankind will move towards having a world sovereign state that in the least resembles the national sovereign states of today. The national sovereign states have taken many different forms, and within a not very long period we have also had the city states and the feudal system which had quite different characteristics. At present we happen to think in terms of a democratically elected legislature, an executive, and a judiciary. I do not believe that this will ever be duplicated on a world scale. It must be remembered that man is flexible and malleable in his ideas, and that these can be adapted to various kinds of social relations and institutions. What the nature of those will be we have not at present the remotest idea. If we did have, we might adopt them right away! Man is inventive; but his powers of invention take time to evolve.

Suggested Citation

  • Roy Harrod, 1972. "Problems Perceived in the International Financial System," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: A. L. Keith Acheson & John F. Chant & Martin F. J. Prachowny (ed.), Bretton Woods Revisited, pages 5-19, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-01521-4_1
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-01521-4_1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-01521-4_1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.