In this paper I seek to understand the roots of South African macroeconomic outperformance since 1929 and whether it can be reconciled with what I have described as conventional wisdom about recovery from the Depression. Unsurprisingly, I find a way of fitting South Africa into that story. In addition, I try to understand better why, if going off the gold standard was so beneficial, indeed even more beneficial for South Africa than for other countries, it was so strongly resisted.

La actual crisis pone de relieve la urgencia de reforzar la arquitectura financiera mundial

We document a decline in the dollar share of international reserves since the turn of the century. This decline reflects active portfolio diversification by central bank reserve managers; it is not a byproduct of changes in exchange rates and interest rates, of reserve accumulation by a small handful of central banks with large and distinctive balance sheets, or of changes in coverage of surveys of reserve composition. Strikingly, the decline in the dollar’s share has not been accompanied by an increase in the shares of the pound sterling, yen and euro, other long-standing reserve currencies and units that, along with the dollar, have historically comprised the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights. Rather, the shift out of dollars has been in two directions: a quarter into the Chinese renminbi, and three quarters into the currencies of smaller countries that have played a more limited role as reserve currencies. A characterization of the evolution of the international reserve system in the last 20 years is thus as ongoing movement away from the dollar, a recent if still modest rise in the role of the renminbi, and changes in market liquidity, relative returns and reserve management enhancing the attractions of nontraditional reserve currencies. These observations provide hints of how the international system may evolve going forward.

This paper reviews the operation of the Bretton Woods international monetary system 50 years after the United States closed the Gold Window linking the dollar to gold in August 1971. It argues that Bretton Woods operated as successfully as it did owing to three special circumstances: low international capital mobility, tight financial regulation, and the dominant economic and financial position of the United States and the dollar. There can be no more straightforward an explanation for why nothing like Bretton Woods will be restored in the foreseeable future.

This ambitious volume, edited by Pierre Pénet of Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay and Juan Flores Zendejas of the University of Geneva, is noteworthy for several reasons. First, while there has been a flurry of research in recent years on the history of sovereign debt by economists, historians, political scientists and sociologists, much of this work adopts the perspective of financial markets, since source material is typically drawn from the financial press, investment bank circulars, ...

What impact will the Covid-19 outbreak have on levels of political trust? Cevat Giray Aksoy, Barry Eichengreen and Orkun Saka find that individuals who experience epidemics in their impressionable years display less confidence in political leaders, governments, and elections for the rest of their lives.

The dollar fell by 10 per cent between its March 2020 high and the end of the calendar year, and many banks and forecasters expect it to fall further, by as much as 35 per cent in 2021. Dollar skeptics cite the end of safe-haven flows following the approval of COVID vaccines, the Federal Reserve’s aggressive quantitative easing, America’s twin deficits, and the rise of viable alternatives to the greenback. This article argues, in contrast, that this dollar pessimism is overdrawn.