An Essay on the Emergence of the International Gold Standard, 1870-80
Abstract
This paper is an exploration of the theory of endogenous regime changes which takes as an illustration the making of the classical gold standard. The international gold-based fixed exchange rate regime that surfaced during the 1870s has traditionally been interpreted as resulting from a mix of structural factors (Kindleberger (1993)), free-rider problems (Kenwood and Lougheed (1972)), transaction costs considerations (Redish (1992)), or political economy forces (Gallarotti (1990)). This paper - initially written to disentangle these various theories - argues that none of the traditionally accepted views proves sufficiently robust to closer scrutiny. We build a model of the pre-1870 international monetary system which allows us to formally test and reject the `free-rider' and `structural' views. We rely on historical and microeconomic evidence to criticize the `transaction costs' and `political economy' theories. Finally, we provide an alternative explanation of the emergence of the gold standard. Our conclusion is twofold. First, we argue that the making of the gold standard was very much the result of path-dependency and coordination problems. Second, we claim that the very process through which the gold standard was adopted played a major role in shaping its operation.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 1210.Length:
Date of creation: Jul 1995
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1210
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 77 Bastwick Street, London EC1V 3PZ
Phone: 44 - 20 - 7183 8801
Fax: 44 - 20 - 7183 8820
Order Information:
Email:
Related research
Keywords: Central Banking; Coordination; Gold Standard; International Monetary System; Regime Change;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
- N2 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1210For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().
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.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.