Nicholas Kaldor as Advocate of Commodity Reserve Currency

Abstract

Nicholas Kaldor is widely (and I think correctly) seen by economists as the most prominent and persuasive supporter of the proposal for an international Commodity Reserve Currency system (for short, ‘CRC’) in the second (post-German) generation of its advocates. He was very much aware of the work of the pioneers in the first generation — Benjamin Graham and Jan Goudriaan — and would not have countenanced any claim that he had founded a CRC movement. But he put CRC in the context of economic development problems, and made clear the essential fact that its logical form is not CRC monometallism but CRC/gold bimetallism.