This chapter is an overview of central banking developments between 1919 and 1939, highlighting the establishment and operation of 28 new central banks, most in what are now called emerging markets and developing countries. Inspired by expert advice and underpinned by foreign lending, the new banks were designed to function independently from political interference, and to defend the gold standard as part an international, rules-based network of cooperating institutions. The Great Depression revealed the flaws in this setup. As capital flows dried up and international cooperation faltered, the gold standard disintegrated, and central banks were unable to head off macroeconomic and financial collapse. Designed to fight inflation, they were ill-prepared to address financial fragility. In the wake of their failure, a two-pronged reaction set in. Central bank autonomy was curtailed, while monetary policy was subordinated to new policy objectives, including the support of import substitution in Latin America and central planning in Eastern Europe. At the same time, central banks’ powers expanded, as they were transformed into agents of state-led development policy. Thus, the new central banks of the 1920s and 1930s were integrally involved not just in post-First World War reconstruction and the Great Depression, but also in the key economic developments of the mid-20th century.

In his speech at the Gaidar Forum 2016 author for the most urgent problems of the world economy. According to him, will be observed the acceleration of growth in developed countries and slower - in developing countries. Consider the economic difficulties that could face the major players in the global economic field -. United States, EU, Russia, China, Brazil, Turkey, etc. However, the author believes that the current economic situation is unlikely to result in a massive political backlash.

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This paper places current efforts at international economic policy coordination in historical perspective. It argues that successful cooperation is most likely in four sets of circumstances. First, when it centers on technical issues. Second, when cooperation is institutionalized - when procedures and precedents create presumptions about the appropriate conduct of policy and reduce the transactions costs of reaching an agreement. Third, when it is concerned with preserving an existing set of policies and behaviors (when it is concerned with preserving a policy regime). Fourth, when it occurs in the context of broad comity among nations. These points are elaborated through a review of 150 years of historical experience and then used to assess the scope for cooperative responses to the current economic crisis.

ADB Distinguished Lecture delivered at ADB Headquarters in Manila on 11 January 2013. © 2013 Asian Development Bank and Asian Development Bank Institute.

This article reconstructs the history of mutual assistance among Federal Reserve Banks. We present data on accommodation operations through which Reserve Banks mutualized gold reserves in emergency situations between 1913 and 1960. Reserve sharing was important in response to liquidity crises and bank runs. Such cooperation was essential for the cohesion of the U.S. monetary union. But fortunes could change, with emergency recipients of gold becoming providers. Because imbalances did not endlessly grow, instead narrowing when region-specific shocks subsided, mutual assistance created only limited tensions. These findings speak to the current debate over TARGET2 balances in Europe.

Proponents of Asian monetary integration have always looked to Europe for inspiration. This paper reconsiders the cas in light of the eurozone crisis. I ask what aspects of the earlier consensus remain intact in the wake of the crisis and what aspects must now be rethought. Is there a danger of "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" - a danger, in other words, that Europe's negative experience since 2009 will cause Asia to turn away too quickly and completely from monetary integration? Or is it in fact appropriate to "throw out the baby" - to conclude in light of Europe's example that Asian monetary integration is not an appropriate and desirable goal?

We analyze the incidence and correlates of growth slowdowns in fast-growing middle-income countries, extending the analysis of an earlier paper (Eichengreen, Park and Shin 2012). We continue to find dispersion in the per capita income at which slowdowns occur. But in contrast to our earlier analysis which pointed to the existence of a single mode at which slowdowns occur in the neighborhood of $15, 000-$16, 000 2005 purchasing power parity dollars, new data point to two modes, one in the $10, 000-$11, 000 range and another at $15, 000-$16, 0000. A number of countries appear to have experienced two slowdowns, consistent with the existence of multiple modes. We conclude that high growth in middle-income countries may decelerate in steps rather than at a single point in time. This implies that a larger group of countries is at risk of a growth slowdown and that middle-income countries may find themselves slowing down at lower income levels than implied by our earlier estimates. We also find that slowdowns are less likely in countries where the population has a relatively high level of secondary and tertiary education and where high-technology products account for a relatively large share of exports, consistent with our earlier emphasis of the importance of moving up the technology ladder in order to avoid the middle-income trap.

In this paper we make three points about global imbalances. First, we show that the imbalances problem, despite having retreated during the crisis, has not gone away. Second, imbalances of the magnitude we are currently witnessing reflect unsustainable levels of leverage and heighten vulnerability to disruptive current account reversals. Third, more forceful steps are needed to raise national saving relative to income in the United States and other deficit economies and to raise spending in surplus countries like China. Real exchange rate changes will be required as part of this adjustment. Our conclusions are informed by a cross country panel analysis of over a 100 countries. The empirical results confirm the importance of budget balances and household leverage while discounting the impact that financial development will have on Chinese surpluses.

In this paper we show that the acceleration of inflation in the United States after 1965 reflected a shift in perceived responsibility for managing the country's international financial position. Prior to 1965 this responsibility was lodged primarily with the Fed, whose policies resembled those of a central bank playing by the gold standard rules of the game. Over time, however, this responsibility was increasingly assumed by the Treasury, while the Federal Reserve acquired increasing room for maneuver as a result of the adoption of the Interest Equalization Tax and other policies with effects analogous to capital controls. Once the external constraint shaped policy less powerfully, the Fed pursued other goals more aggressively, resulting in more inflationary pressure. We document these points with a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee.