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When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for 'a new Bretton Woods' to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of forty-four nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization. The actual story surrounding the historic Bretton Woods accords, however, is full of startling drama, intrigue, and rivalry, which are vividly brought to life in Benn Steil's epic account. Upending the conventional wisdom that Bretton Woods was the product of an amiable Anglo-American collaboration, Steil shows that it was in reality part of a much more ambitious geopolitical agenda hatched within President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Treasury and aimed at eliminating Britain as an economic and political rival. At the heart of the drama were the antipodal characters of John Maynard Keynes, the renowned and revolutionary British economist, and Harry Dexter White, the dogged, self-made American technocrat. Bringing to bear new and striking archival evidence, Steil offers the most compelling portrait yet of the complex and controversial figure of White--the architect of the dollar's privileged place in the Bretton Woods monetary system, who also, very privately, admired Soviet economic planning and engaged in clandestine communications with Soviet intelligence officials and agents over many years. A remarkably deft work of storytelling that reveals how the blueprint for the postwar economic order was actually drawn,The Battle of Bretton Woodsis destined to become a classic of economic and political history.

We propose a simple model of the international monetary system. We study the world supply and demand for reserve assets denominated in different currencies under a variety of scenarios: a hegemon versus a multipolar world; abundant versus scarce reserve assets; and a gold exchange standard versus a floating rate system. We rationalize the Triffin dilemma, which posits the fundamental instability of the system, as well as the common prediction regarding the natural and beneficial emergence of a multipolar world, the Nurkse warning that a multipolar world is more unstable than a hegemon world, and the Keynesian argument that a scarcity of reserve assets under a gold standard or at the zero lower bound is recessionary. Our analysis is both positive and normative.

We review the findings of the literature on the benefits of international financial flows and find that they are quantitatively elusive. We then present evidence on the existence of a global cycle in gross cross-border flows, asset prices and leverage and discuss its impact on monetary policy autonomy across different exchange rate regimes. We focus in particular on the effect of US monetary policy shocks on the UK's financial conditions.

This article examines the dynamics of power and rule-setting in the international monetary system. It begins with a brief discussion of the meaning of power in international monetary relations, distinguishing between two critical dimensions of monetary power: autonomy and influence. Major developments have led to a greater diffusion of power in monetary affairs, both among states and between states and societal actors. But the diffusion of power has mainly been in the dimension of autonomy, rather than influence, meaning that leadership in the system has been dispersed rather than relocated-a pattern of change in the geopolitics of finance that might be called leaderless diffusion. The pattern of leaderless diffusion, in turn, is generating greater ambiguity in prevailing governance structures. Rule-setting in monetary relations increasingly relies not on negotiations among a few powerful states but, rather, on the evolution of custom and usage among growing numbers of autonomous agents. Impacts on governance structures can be seen on two levels: the individual state and the global system. At the state level, the dispersion of power compels governments to rethink their commitment to national monetary sovereignty. At the systemic level, it compounds the difficulties of bargaining on monetary issues. More and more, formal rules are being superseded by informal norms that emerge, like common law, not from legislation or statutes but from everyday conduct and social convention.

The international monetary system is known to be asymmetric given the dominant use of a few international currencies. The international trade of developing countries is mainly invoiced in US dollars, unlike industrialized countries which invoice a much higher share of their exports in their home currencies. The same logic is at work in the issuance of international debt. While the attempts to challenge the supremacy of the US dollars have failed in most cases, China is coming to the fore and is increasing its use of the Renminbi, even supported by its growing recognition within the International Monetary Fund. By reassessing the relevance of existing academic works, this paper demonstrates how monetary asymmetries have been reinforced in recent decades, and offers explanations related to currency choices. Finally, this paper offers the conclusion that international monetary reform is necessary. One cannot overlook that the monetary system embodies a major constraint on the sovereignty of developing countries and that some developing countries have set out to challenge the US dollar usage.

In this essay, we highlight the interactions of the international monetary system with financial conditions, not just with the output, inflation, and balance of payments goals usually discussed. We review how financial conditions and outright financial crises have posed difficulties for each of the main international monetary systems in the last 150 years or so: the gold standard, the interwar period, the Bretton Woods system, and the current system of floating exchange rates. We argue that even as the world economy has evolved and sentiments have shifted among widely different policy regimes, there remain three fundamental challenges for any international monetary and financial system: How should exchange rates between national currencies be determined? How can countries with balance of payments deficits reduce these without sharply contracting their economies and with minimal risk of possible negative spillovers abroad? How can the international system ensure that countries have access to an adequate supply of international liquidity—financial resources generally acceptable to foreigners in all circumstances? In concluding, we evaluate how the current international monetary system answers these questions.

This study assesses whether the international monetary system is already tri-polar by testing what we call China's 'dominance hypothesis', i.e. whether the renminbi already influences exchange rate and monetary policies strongly in Asia, a direct reference to the old 'German dominance hypothesis' which ascribed to the German mark a dominant role in Europe in the 1980s. Using a global factor model of exchange rates and a complementary event study, we find evidence that the renminbi has become a key driver of currency movements in Asia since the mid-2000s, especially since the global financial crisis, in line with China's dominance hypothesis.

The global financial and economic crisis has prompted renewed interest in international monetary reform. The key-currency status of the US dollar has been challenged but discussion of what might be reasonable objectives and institutional structures for a new system has not yet broken new ground. Nevertheless, as interest in the issue begins to include policymakers and non-governmental organisations, new proposals are likely to emerge. To assist the process, this paper provides an overview of how the international monetary system has evolved since the inauguration of the gold standard in the late 1800s to provide a context for some of the reform ideas that emerged during and after the discussions at Bretton Woods and some of the proposals that were offered subsequently. It concludes with an outline of three proposals by the author that are intended to expand the debate.

The economics of the 20th-century is reconsidered.It is time to wrap up the century in some conclusions. The 20th-century closes with an international monetary system inferior to that with which it began, but much improved from the situation that existed only two and a half decades ago. It remains to be seen where leadership will come from and whether a restoration of the international monetary system will be compatible with the power configuration of the world economy. It would certainly make a contribution to world harmony.

Global capital mobility is a crucial determinant of economic, political, and social life. While much has been written about the ethics of human movement, political theory has remained nearly silent on the ethics of capital movement. In this article, we intend to develop a general account of the ethics of global capital mobility—identifying both the forms of mobility that merit protection and those that merit restriction. By integrating normative theorizing with an economic analysis of global investment, we argue that the movement of capital, with important exceptions, should be much more restricted than it is today. We make the case, on both grounds of global justice and international assistance, for imposing coercive limits on cross-border inflows and outflows of capital. To enable them, we also propose a radical reform of the international monetary system—a new global currency—that would simultaneously facilitate beneficial capital movements.