Bretton Woods Agreements

Together with Scholarly Commentaries and Essential Historical Documents

Naomi Lamoreaux, Ian Shapiro

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780300245578
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Commentaries by top scholars alongside the most important documents and speeches concerning the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944

The two world wars brought an end to a long-standing system of international commerce based on the gold standard. After the First World War, the weaknesses in the gold standard contributed to hyperinflation, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and ultimately World War II. The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 arose out of the Allies’ desire to design a postwar international economic system that would provide a basis for prosperity, trade, and worldwide economic development.

Alongside important documents and speeches concerning the adoption and evolution of the Bretton Woods system, this volume includes lively, readable, original essays on such topics as why the gold standard was doomed, how Bretton Woods encouraged the adoption of Keynesian economics, how the agreements influenced late-twentieth-century ideas of international development, and why the agreements ultimately had to give way to other arrangements.

Naomi Lamoreaux is Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics and History at Yale University. Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I. The Weight of the Past
• Chapter 1. The Political Economy of the Bretton Woods Agreements
• Chapter 2. The Monetary Role of Gold as the Original Sin of Bretton Woods
• Chapter 3. The Missing Bretton Woods Debate over Flexible Exchange Rates
• Part II. The Disappearing Order
• Chapter 4. The Universally Keynesian Vision of Bretton Woods
• Chapter 5. Bretton Woods: The Parliamentary Debates in the United Kingdom
• Chapter 6. A “Barbarous Relic”: The French, Gold, and the Demise of Bretton Woods
• Part III. Paths Taken and Not Taken
• Chapter 7. Nutrition, Food, Agriculture, and the World Economy
• Chapter 8 Australia’s Full-Employment Proposals at Bretton Woods: A Road Only Partly Taken
• Chapter 9. How the Bretton Woods Negotiations Helped to Pioneer International Development
• Part IV. Denouement and Legacy
• Chapter 10. The Operation and Demise of the Bretton Woods System, 1958–1971
• Chapter 11. Japan and the Collapse of Bretton Woods
• Chapter 12. The Multiple Contexts of Bretton Woods
• Historical Documents
• Glossary
• Contributors
• Credits
• Index