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Monetary Statecraft and Profits of Dollar Hegemony

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Abstract

Monetary statecraft, understood as efforts to influence the policies of other states by manipulating monetary conditions, has been a recurring feature of the global economy since World War II. At critical moments over the last four decades, the United States has exploited the vulnerability of countries in Europe and East Asia to changes in their currencies’ exchange rates vis-à-vis the dollar in an effort to extract policy adjustments from their governments and central banks. More successful in some episodes than in others, this “exchange-rate weapon” has played a central role in international conflicts over balance-of-payments adjustment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Henning (2006).

  2. 2.

    Bordo et al. (2011).

  3. 3.

    Greenspan (2000, p. 14).

  4. 4.

    Tan (2009).

  5. 5.

    See the Report on International Economy and Exchange Rate Policy issued by the U.S. Treasury Department on April, 1989.

  6. 6.

    However, the IMF has no right to force members to change their exchange rate policies.

  7. 7.

    Eichengreen (2011).

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Correspondence to Xiaojing Zhang .

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© 2017 China Social Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Li, Y., Zhang, X. (2017). Monetary Statecraft and Profits of Dollar Hegemony. In: Imbalance and Rebalance. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6150-9_7

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