Description
With World War II still raging, nations came together to create a new international monetary order, the Bretton Woods system. This agreement created the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and a system of stable exchange rates with currencies pegged against the dollar. One man saw the political, economic, and moral tensions inherent in keeping the dollar, a national currency, as a global reserve currency. When the monetary arrangement collapsed in 1973, economist Robert Triffin had already predicted its downfall two decades previously.Robert Triffin, a Belgian-American scholar and policy advisor, was a defining voice in economics and international politics in the twentieth century and an architect of the new multilateral liberal world order in his own right. Best known for his analysis of the vulnerabilities of the international monetary system - the "Triffin dilemma" - Triffin was a voice of reason and compassion in the postwar period. Triffin played a key role in the debates on European monetary integration, especially with his proposals for a European Reserve Fund and a European currency unit, becoming one of the intellectual fathers of Europe's single currency, the euro.This intellectual biography evaluates what made Triffin a crucial figure in modern economic history. With an emphasis on the ideas that shaped the postwar international system, Robert Triffin: A Life explores both the man and the mission. In addition to analyzing his work in economics and policymaking, Ivo Maes and Ilaria Pasotti trace Triffin's story from a very modest background, as the son of a butcher, who grew up through the interwar period, to a singularly influential economist in the late twentieth century. The first biography of one of the intellectual giants of the postwar era, Robert Triffin critically examines the accomplishments and the legacy of a scholar who believed that innovations in economic policy could lead to a better and more peaceful world.
Table of Contents
Preface by Jacques de LarosièreIntroduction: A Monk in Economists' ClothingAbbreviationsFigures and tables1 A Child of the Interwar Period1.1 Introduction1.2 Early Years1.3 Studies at Louvain and the Belgian Franc Devaluation of 19351.4 Graduate Studies at Harvard1.5 The Theory of Currency Overvaluation and the Belgian Devaluation1.6 Monopolistic Competition Theory1.7 A Difficult Year in Belgium and Return to Harvard2 Money Doctor in Latin America2.1 Introduction2.2 The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in the Early 1940s2.3 Triffin's Vision of the Latin American Economies2.4 The Latin American Missions2.5 Triffin's Global View on the International Monetary System3 Architect of the European Payments Union3.1 Introduction3.2 The Early Years of the International Monetary Fund3.3 The European Economy and the Marshall Plan3.4 Triffin and the Exchange Rate Issue3.5 Triffin and the Creation of the European Payments Union3.6 The German Payments Crisis3.7 Triffin's Search for Destination3.8 Triffin's Retrospective View of the EPU4 Bretton Woods Cassandra 4.1 Introduction4.2 Yale and the Vietnam War4.3 Europe and the Money Muddle4.4 Gold and the Dollar Crisis4.5 Reform Debates in the 1960s4.6 The Demise of the Bretton Woods System4.7 The Paper-dollar Standard5 Monetary Expert on Monnet's Action Committee for the United States of Europe 5.1 Introduction5.2 A Strong Advocate of the EPU Approach5.3 The Rome Treaty5.4 The Campaign for a European Reserve Fund5.5 The 1969 Hague Summit and the Werner Report6 Return to Belgium6.1 Introduction6.2 IMS: the "International Monetary Scandal"6.3 The European Monetary System6.4 The Development of the Private ECU Market7 EpilogueSources.
