Abstract
The world has had two experiences with gold standards: the classical gold standard and the interwar gold standard. The ‘rules of the game’, government policies to preserve the gold standard, were rarely followed. Rather, government responsible policy and credible commitment to the standard, private stabilizing arbitrage and speculation, and stable political and economic environment made the classical gold standard a success. The absence of these elements and the presence of the Great Depression combined to make the interwar gold standard a failure.
Keywords
- Arbitrage
- Bank of France
- Bank rate
- Bank Restriction Period
- Banking crises
- Bimetallism
- Bullion
- Bullion standard
- Central banking
- Commitment
- Convertibility
- Current account deficits
- Deflation
- Exchange controls
- Federal Reserve System
- Fixed exchange rates
- Floating exchange rates
- Gold standard
- Gold-exchange standard
- Great Depression
- Monetary base
- Money multiplier
- Money supply
- Orthodox metallism
- Reichsbank
- Reserve ratio
- Silver standard
- Specie-flow mechanism
- Speculation
- Sterilization
- Sticky prices
- Sticky wages
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Officer, L.H. (2018). Gold Standard. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1102
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1102
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