Central Banking without Romance

Thomas Hogan ()

European Journal of Comparative Economics, 2018, vol. 15, issue 2, 293-314

Abstract: Many economists, including former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, believe that the gold standard generates poor economic outcomes including output volatility, price instability, financial panics, the spread of recessions via the exchange rate, and speculation-induced collapse. These problems, however, do not by themselves demonstrate the superiority of central banks over the gold standard. Comparative institutional analysis requires demonstrating that the relevant alternative, in this case a central bank, can improve upon these outcomes in practice. We use this standard to compare central banking and the gold standard in the United States. Recent theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that the Fed has not been able to measurably improve upon the gold standard even when it comes to these deficiencies.

Keywords: Ben Bernanke; Federal Reserve; Gold standard; Public Choice; Stability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ejce.liuc.it/18242979201802/182429792018150205.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:liu:liucej:v:15:y:2018:i:2:p:293-314

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by Matteo Migheli, Giovanni Ramello, Koji Domon, Peter Grajzl, David M. Kemme, Marcello Signorelli and Richard Watt

More articles in European Journal of Comparative Economics from Cattaneo University (LIUC) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Laura Ballestra ().