Paul van Zeeland and the first decade of the US Federal Reserve System: The analysis from a European central banker who was a student of Kemmerer

Ivo Maes () and Rebeca Gomez Betancourt
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Ivo Maes: National Bank of Belgium and Robert Triffin Chair, Université catholique de Louvain and ICHEC Brussels Management School, Boulevard de Berlaimont 14, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

No 339, Working Paper Research from National Bank of Belgium

Abstract: The establishment of a central bank occurred at very different moments in the process of economic integration in the United States and the European Union. In this paper, we go into the first years of the Federal Reserve System through the lens of Paul van Zeeland’s PhD dissertation. Paul van Zeeland (1893-1973) became the first Head of the Economics Service of the National Bank of Belgium in 1921, after his studies in Princeton with Edwin Walter Kemmerer. There are clear similarities in their analyses of the Federal Reserve System, for instance in their adherence to the gold standard and the real bills doctrine as well as in their emphasis on the elasticity of the money supply. Moreover, they shared a view - with hindsight a rather naïve view - that with the Fed in place, financial crises would be a distant memory. However, there were also important differences. So, van Zeeland, like several other economists as Warburg, accorded greater significance to the discount market (a key factor for the international role of the dollar) and to a stronger centralization of the Fed (which would be taken up in the 1935 Banking Act). Moreover, very specific for van Zeeland is the importance given to the Fed's independence from the State (an element related to his continental European background and Belgium's experience of monetary financing during the war).

Keywords: van Zeeland; Kemmerer; Federal Reserve System; financial crisis; banking reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 B1 E58 F02 N23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2018-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-his, nep-mac and nep-mon
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Related works:
Journal Article: Paul van Zeeland and the First Decade of the US Federal Reserve System: the Analysis from a European Central Banker who was a Student of Kemmerer (2018)
Working Paper: Paul van Zeeland and the first decade of the US Federal Reserve System: the analysis from a European central banker who was a student of Kemmerer (2018)
Working Paper: Paul van Zeeland and the first decade of the US Federal Reserve System: the analysis from a European central banker who was a student of Kemmerer (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbb:reswpp:201803-339

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