IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/jhisae/0192.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Currency Board Debate of the 1940s-1960s

Author

Listed:
  • Thakkar, Parth

    (The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise)

Abstract

The late 1940s to the 1960s featured a sustained debate about currency boards in underdeveloped (or, in today’s parlance, developing) economies and their desirability compared to the alternative of central banking. Critics of currency boards found fault with them for the foregone cost of their “idle reserves,” their implied deflationary bias, their lack of discretionary monetary policy, and their lack of a lender of last resort, among other things. Defenders of the currency board system argued that the criticisms were either incorrect or irrelevant. After carefully reviewing the debate, I opine on it, coming down mainly on the side of the defenders of currency boards.

Suggested Citation

  • Thakkar, Parth, 2021. "The Currency Board Debate of the 1940s-1960s," Studies in Applied Economics 192, The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:jhisae:0192
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2021/10/The-Currency-Board-Debate-of-the-1940s-1960s.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. H. A. Shannon, 1952. "The Modern Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 2(2), pages 318-362, April.
    2. Eugene A. Birnbaum, 1957. "The Cost of a Foreign Exchange Standard or of the Use of a Foreign Currency as the Circulating Medium," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(3), pages 477-491, February.
    3. John Williamson, 1995. "What Role of Currency Boards?," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number pa40, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:zbw:bofitp:1999_009 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Raoul Lättemäe, 2001. "Monetary transmission mechanism in Estonia - some theorethical considerations and stylized aspects," Bank of Estonia Working Papers 2001-4, Bank of Estonia, revised 13 Oct 2001.
    3. repec:cbk:journl:v:2:y:2013:i:2:p:71-84 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Shinji Takagi & Mototsugu Shintani & Tetsuro Okamoto, 2004. "Measuring the Economic Impact of Monetary Union: The Case of Okinawa," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(4), pages 858-867, November.
    5. Dorota Zuchowska, 2015. "Accession To The Eurozone As Lithuania’S Exit Strategy From The Currency Board System," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 10(3), pages 27-43, September.
    6. Neven Valev, 2000. "Building Monetary Credibility in a Transforming Economy," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper0212, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    7. Pastor Jr., Manuel & Wise, Carol, 1999. "Stabilization and its Discontents: Argentina's Economic Restructuring in the 1990s," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 477-503, March.
    8. Guergana Stanoeva, 2004. "Les caisses d’émission des Pays Baltes et de la Bulgarie : la recherche d’une crédibilité renforcée," Revue d'Économie Financière, Programme National Persée, vol. 75(2), pages 85-112.
    9. Richard W. Kopcke, 1999. "Currency boards: once and future monetary regimes?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue May, pages 21-37.
    10. Tony Addison & Alemayehu Geda & Philippe Le Billon & S Mansoob Murshed, 2005. "Reconstructing and Reforming the Financial System in Conflict and 'Post-Conflict' Economies," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 703-718.
    11. Neven Valev & John Carlson, 2007. "Beliefs about Exchange‐Rate Stability: Survey Evidence from the Currency Board in Bulgaria," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 10(2), pages 111-121.
    12. Pieter van Foreest & Casper de Vries, 2003. "The Forex Regime and EMU Expansion," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 285-298, July.
    13. Yum K. Kwan & Francis T. Lui & Leonard K. Cheng, 2001. "Credibility of Hong Kong's Currency Board: The Role of Institutional Arrangements," NBER Chapters, in: Regional and Global Capital Flows: Macroeconomic Causes and Consequences, pages 233-259, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Bullmann, Dirk & Klemm, Jonas & Pinna, Andrea, 2019. "In search for stability in crypto-assets: are stablecoins the solution?," Occasional Paper Series 230, European Central Bank.
    15. Jeffrey Frankel & Sergio Schmukler & Luis Serven, 2000. "Verifiability and the Vanishing Intermediate Exchange Rate Regime," NBER Working Papers 7901, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Boris Blagov & Michael Funke, 2016. "The Credibility of Hong Kong's Currency Board System: Looking Through the Prism of MS-VAR Models with Time-Varying Transition Probabilities," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 78(6), pages 895-914, December.
    17. Neven T Valev, 2006. "From a Currency Board to the Euro: Public Attitudes Toward Unilateral Euroisation in Bulgaria1," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 48(3), pages 480-496, September.
    18. Asa Malmstrom Rognes & Catherine R. Schenk, 2023. "One country, two currencies: The adoption of the Hong Kong currency board, 1983," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(2), pages 477-497, May.
    19. SL Mollentze, 2002. "The Suitability Of A Currency Board For An Emerging Market Economy," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 70(1), pages 1-28, March.
    20. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/6961 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Yum K. Kwan & Francis T. Lui, 2004. "Les régimes de caisse d’émission sont-ils performants ? Le cas de Hong-Kong," Revue d'Économie Financière, Programme National Persée, vol. 75(2), pages 153-178.
    22. Bruno Cabrillac & Camille Macaire & Marie-Elisabeth De la Serve, 2022. "The remarkable resilience of Hong Kong’s exchange rate regime [La singulière résilience du régime de change de Hong Kong]," Bulletin de la Banque de France, Banque de France, issue 239.
    23. Feng, Shu & Fu, Liang & Ho, Chun-Yu & Alex Ho, Wai-Yip, 2023. "Political stability and credibility of currency board," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Currency board; debate;

    JEL classification:

    • B27 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - International Trade and Finance
    • E59 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Other
    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
    • N10 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - General, International, or Comparative

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:jhisae:0192. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Steve H. Hanke (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaejhus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.