The Dress Rehearsal: the creation of a Central Bank in Brazil in 1923

Lucia Regina Centuriao ()

No 2019_03, Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP)

Abstract: This paper aims to analyze an experiment in the history of the Brazilian economy: the transformation of Banco do Brasil into a Central Bank in 1923, and the debate surrounding this experiment. More strictly, the article proposes to answer the following question: what was the role of a Central Bank for Brazilian policymakers in the mid-1920s? I point out that the Central Banks abroad were associated at the time with the maintenance of the gold standard, while in Brazil, although the discussion echoed the discourse between papelistas and metalistas, the defense of the creation of the Central Bank was appropriated by the agenda of the first group. Therefore, a generational change of policymakers probably was necessary to undo the association between a Central Bank and the excess of paper currency, in the economic thought of the political environment. The work is based on the idea of communities of interpretation, and editions of the Retrospecto Comercial, the Correio Paulistano, and annals of the Federal Senate were analyzed.

Keywords: Central Bank; Gold Standard; policymakers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B10 B15 B17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mon
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