IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4642.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

France and the Bretton Woods International Monetary System: 1960-1968

Author

Listed:
  • Michael D. Bordo
  • Dominique Simard
  • Eugene White

Abstract

We reinterpret the commonly held view in the U.S. that France, by following a policy from 1965 to 1968 of deliberately converting their dollar holdings into gold helped perpetuate the collapse of the Bretton Woods International Monetary System. We argue that French international monetary policy under Charles de Gaulle was consistent with strategies developed in the interwar period and the French Plan of 1943. France used proposals to return to an orthodox gold standard as well as conversions of its dollar reserves into gold as tactical threats to induce the United States to initiate the reform of the international monetary system towards a more symmetrical and cooperative gold-exchange standard regime.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael D. Bordo & Dominique Simard & Eugene White, 1994. "France and the Bretton Woods International Monetary System: 1960-1968," NBER Working Papers 4642, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4642
    Note: DAE IFM ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4642.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eichengreen, Barry, 1996. "Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195101133.
    2. Robert Triffin, 1965. "Sterling, The Dollar, De Gaulle and Gold," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(4), pages 19-23, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eugene N. White & Filippo Occhino & Kim Oosterlinck, 2007. "How Occupied France Financed Its Own Exploitation in World War II," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 295-299, May.
    2. Eichengreen, Barry, 1993. "The Endogeneity of Exchange Rate Regimes," CEPR Discussion Papers 812, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Michael D. Bordo & Owen F. Humpage & Anna J. Schwartz, 2015. "US Intervention during the Bretton Woods Era, 1962–1973," NBER Chapters, in: Strained Relations: US Foreign-Exchange Operations and Monetary Policy in the Twentieth Century, pages 120-209, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Michael D. Bordo & Barry Eichengreen, 1998. "Implications of the Great Depression for the Development of the International Monetary System," NBER Chapters, in: The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century, pages 403-454, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Sergey Narkevich & Pavel Trunin, 2012. "Reserve Currencies: Factors of Evolution and their Role in the World Economy," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 162P.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aiginger, Karl, 2010. "The Great Recession vs. the Great Depression: Stylized facts on siblings that were given different foster parents," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 4, pages 1-41.
    2. Accominotti, Olivier, 2012. "London Merchant Banks, the Central European Panic, and the Sterling Crisis of 1931," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(1), pages 1-43, March.
    3. Barbara McKiernan, 1998. "Monetary disturbance or financial market collapse: tests of two theories of the Great Depression," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 133-144.
    4. Ben S. Bernanke & Vincent R. Reinhart & Brian P. Sack, 2004. "Monetary Policy Alternatives at the Zero Bound: An Empirical Assessment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 35(2), pages 1-100.
    5. A. Malliaris & Mary Malliaris, 2013. "Are oil, gold and the euro inter-related? Time series and neural network analysis," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 1-14, January.
    6. Marianna Astore & Michele Fratianni, 2016. ""We can't pay": How Italy cancelled war debts after Lausanne," Mo.Fi.R. Working Papers 129, Money and Finance Research group (Mo.Fi.R.) - Univ. Politecnica Marche - Dept. Economic and Social Sciences.
    7. Alejandro Ayuso‐Díaz & Antonio Tena‐Junguito, 2020. "Trade in the shadow of power: Japanese industrial exports in the interwar years," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 73(3), pages 815-843, August.
    8. Edwards, Sebastian, 2020. "Change of monetary regime, contracts, and prices: Lessons from the great depression, 1932–1935," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    9. Juan Herreño & Matias Morales & Mathieu Pedemonte, 2023. "The Effect of Local Economic Shocks on Local and National Elections," Working Papers 23-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    10. Patrick K. O’Brien & Nuno Palma, 2019. "Danger To The Old Lady Of Threadneedle Street? The Bank Restriction Act And The Regime Shift To Paper Money, 1797-18211," Working Papers 0082, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    11. Khan, Haider, 2013. "Global Financial Governance: Towards a New Global Financial Architecture for Averting Deep Financial Crises," MPRA Paper 49275, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Joachim Voth, 2013. "Tightening Tensions: Fiscal Policy and Civil Unrest in South America, 1937–95," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Luis Felipe Céspedes & Jordi Galí (ed.),Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Performance, edition 1, volume 17, chapter 3, pages 59-92, Central Bank of Chile.
    13. Charles I. Plosser & George P. Shultz & John C. Williams, 2016. "Panel on Independence, Accountability, and Transparency in Central Bank Governance," Book Chapters,in: John H. Cochrane & John B. Taylor (ed.), Central Bank Governance & Oversight Reforminancial Crisis, chapter 6 Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
    14. repec:ehl:wpaper:112428 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Monnet, Eric & Puy, Damien, 2020. "Do old habits die hard? Central banks and the Bretton Woods gold puzzle," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    16. Bazot, Guillaume & Monnet, Eric & Morys, Matthias, 2019. "Taming the gobal financial cycle: Central banks and the sterilization of capital flows in the first era of globalization," IBF Paper Series 03-19, IBF – Institut für Bank- und Finanzgeschichte / Institute for Banking and Financial History, Frankfurt am Main.
    17. Michael D. Bordo & William Roberds, 2022. "Central Bank Digital Currencies: An Old Tale with a New Chapter," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2022-18, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    18. Tamim Bayoumi and Barry Eichengreen., 1994. "The Stability of the Gold Standard and the Evolution of the International Monetary System," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers C94-040, University of California at Berkeley.
    19. Ronny Mazzocchi & Roberto Tamborini, 2019. "Current Account Imbalances and the Euro Area: Alternative Views," EconPol Working Paper 27, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    20. Shambaugh, Jay C., 2006. "An experiment with multiple currencies: the American monetary system from 1838-60," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 609-645, October.
    21. Grant Fleming, 1997. "Keynes, purchasing power parity and exchange rate policy in New Zealand during the 1930s depression," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 1-14.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F42 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - International Policy Coordination and Transmission
    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nbr:nberwo:4642. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.