ISBN: 3540416056
TITLE: From Gold to Euro
AUTHOR: Spahn
TOC:

Introduction 1
PART I
ON THE THEORY OF A MONETARY ECONOMY 7
1. Market Organization and Monetary Contracts 7
1.1 Standard of Value and Means of Payment: A Credit Theory of Money 7
1.2 The Organization of Society as a Payment Economy 12
1.3 Money as a Public Good 15
2. Money, Interest and Capital 18
2.1 Neutrality of Money versus Nominal-Standard Economy 18
Box I: General Equilibrium Theory and Money 19
2.2 Time, Interest and Money: The Myth of an Intertemporal Economy 25
Box 2: Time Preference and Intertemporal Prices 28
2.3 Capital as Cash Advance: The Monetary Theory of the Rate of Interest 32
Box 3: The Marginal Productivity of Capital and the Rate of Interest 33
2.4 Equilibrium and Employment in a Monetary Economy 39
Box 4: Money and Unemployment 41
Summary of Part I 44
PART II
BANKING AND THE RISE OF MONETARY POLICY 47
3. Banks as Creators of Money 47
3.1 Money as a Regulated Medium 47
Box 5: Banking Business and the Liquidity Problem 49
3.2 Metallic Money, Bank Deposits and Government Money 52
Box 6: Financing International Trade 54
3.3 The "Backing" of Money in the Banking Doctrine 57
Box 7: The Property Theory of Money and Interest 60
3.4 The Monetary Logic of Mercantilism 63
Box 8: Free Trade and Welfare Gains 66
4. The Emergence of Central Banking in England 69
4.1 The Foundation of the Bank of England 69
Box 9: Bimetallism and Gresham's Law 73
4.2 Suspension and Resumption of the Gold Standard: The Bullion Controversy 73
4.3 From Palmer's Rule to Peel's Act: The Separation of Money and Credit 77
4.4 The Currency-Banking Controversy on the Elasticity of Money Supply 83
4.5 Interest Rate Policy and the Two-Tiered Banking System 88
Summary of Part II 94
PART III
THE EVOLUTION OF KEY CURRENCY SYSTEMS: A GAME-THEORETIC PERSPECTIVE 97
5. The Hegemony of Pound Sterling in the Gold Standard 97
5.1 The Gold Standard as an International Monetary System 97
Box 10: The Rules of the International Gold Standard, 1879-1913 99
5.2 London a s the World's Banker 101
5.3 Macroeconomic Interdependence in a Game-Theoretic Model 106
Box 11: The Economic Logic of Reaction Functions and Loss Curves 110
5.4 Money Demand Effects of Sterling as a Reserve Currency 113
5.5 Different Policy Preferences and Shocks 116
5.6 The End of the Game: From the Gold to the Wage Standard 121
6. The Loss of Credibility and Stability in the Bretton Woods System 126
6.1 American Monetary Policy Without a Nominal Anchor? 126
Box 12: The Bretton Woods Agreement in 1945 - The Spirit of the Treaty 127
Box 13: The Fixed-Rate Dollar Standard, 1950-70 129
6.2 The Bretton Woods Model 130
6.3 Triffin's Dilemma: The Liquidity Problem of the Federal Reserve 136
6.4 The Deterioration of the External Balance and World Inflation 140
7. The European Paper Money Standard: A "DM Club" 144
7.1 The Determination of the Key Currency by Market Forces 144
Box 14: The European Monetary System in 1979 - The Spirit of the Treaty 145
Box 15: The European Monetary System as a Greater Deutsche Mark Area 1979-92 148
7.2 The "Advantage" of Fighting Inflation With Tied Hands 150
7.3 Blowing up the EMS by the Bundesbank's Stabilization Policies 154
Box 16: The Macroeconomic Consequences of German Currency Union 156
7.4 The Conflict between Internal and External Equilibrium in the Key Currency 
Country 160
Summary of Part III 164
PART IV
THE EURO IN THE WORLD ECONOMY 169
8. A Monetary Union With a Denationalized Currency 169
8.1 The EMU Project: A Political Reform with Obscure Ends 169
8.2 Monetary Policy and Price Stability 173
9. The Multiple International Monetary Standard 179
9.1 Interest Rate Parity Condition and the Exchange Rate Random Walk 179
9.2 Toward a Bipolar Euro-Dollar System 183
Summary of Part IV 187
List of Figures 191
List of Tables 193
References 195
Index 213
END
