The Currency Board Debate of the 1940s-1960s

Parth Thakkar
Additional contact information
Parth Thakkar: The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise

No 192, Studies in Applied Economics from The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise

Abstract: The late 1940s to the 1960s featured a sustained debate about currency boards in underdeveloped (or, in today’s parlance, developing) economies and their desirability compared to the alternative of central banking. Critics of currency boards found fault with them for the foregone cost of their “idle reserves,” their implied deflationary bias, their lack of discretionary monetary policy, and their lack of a lender of last resort, among other things. Defenders of the currency board system argued that the criticisms were either incorrect or irrelevant. After carefully reviewing the debate, I opine on it, coming down mainly on the side of the defenders of currency boards.

Keywords: Currency board; debate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B27 E59 F33 N10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2021-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cba, nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2021/10/Th ... -the-1940s-1960s.pdf Full text (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:ris:jhisae:0192

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Studies in Applied Economics from The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Steve H. Hanke ().