Transferring Wealth and Power from the Old to the New World : Monetary and fiscal institutions in the 17th through the 19th centuries

This book contains a collection of Michael D. Bordo's essays, written singly and with colleagues, on the classical gold standard and related regimes based directly or indirectly on gold convertibility. The gold standard (and its variants) was the basis for both international and domestic monetary arrangements from the third quarter of the nineteenth century until 1971 when President Nixon closed the US gold window, effectively ending the Bretton Woods International Monetary System. Although the gold standard and its variants are now history, it still has great appeal for policymakers and scholars. Several desirable features of the gold standard have resources for the ongoing issue of international monetary reform. They include its record as a stable nominal anchor; its automaticity; and its role as a credible commitment mechanism. The essays in this collection are organized around several themes: gold and the international monetary system; the commodity theory of money; the gold standard as a rule; variants of the gold standard including the interwar gold standard and the Bretton Woods International Monetary System.