"Eric Helleiner provides a detailed exploration of the politics underlying Canada's recent debate over the merits of monetary union with the United States. Comparing the US Federal Reserve and the European Monetary Union, he argues that Canada would exercise far less influence within a North American monetary union than individual countries do within the European community. He also analyses the seemingly paradoxical support of Quebec sovereignists for free trade and monetary union." --Résumé de l'éditeur.
This book surveys the prospects for regional monetary integration in various parts of the world. Beginning with a brief review of the theory of optimal currency areas, it goes on to examine the structure and functioning of the European Monetary Union, then turns to the prospects for monetary integration elsewhere in the world - North America, South America, and East Asia. Such cooperation may take the form of full-fledged monetary unions or looser forms of monetary cooperation. The book emphasizes the economic and institutional requirements for successful monetary integration, including the need for a single central bank in the case of a full-fledged monetary union, and the corresponding need for multinational institutions to safeguard its independence and assure its accountability. The book concludes with a chapter on the implications of monetary integration for the United States and the US dollar.
This book examines monetary policy by focusing on how the President and the Senate influence monetary policy by appointing Federal Reserve members. It attempts to answer three questions about the appointment process and its effects. First, do politicians influence monetary policy through Federal Reserve appointments? Second, who influences the process - the President alone or both the President and the Senate? Third, what explains the structure of the Federal Reserve appointment process? The test models show that the President alone, both the President and Senate, or neither, may influence monetary policy with Federal Reserve appointments. The structure of the process reflects political battles between the Democrats and Republicans regarding the centralization of authority to set monetary policy within the Federal Reserve System. The study extends the analysis to the European Central Bank and shows that the Federal Reserve process is more representative of society than the European Central Bank process.
Helleiner finds little support in the U.S. for the concessions that would be necessary to make a North American monetary union palatable in Canada. Comparing the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Monetary Union, he argues that the influence of Canada within a North American monetary union would be far less than that of individual countries within the European community. He also considers the seemingly paradoxical support of Quebec sovereignists for free trade and monetary union.
This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art research in the field of monetary and financial history. The authors comprise different generations of leading scholars from universities worldwide. Thanks to its unrivaled breadth both in time (from antiquity to the present) and geographical coverage (from Europe to the Americas and Asia), the volume is set to become a key reference for historians, economists, and social scientists with an interest in the subject. The handbook reflects the existing variety of scholarly approaches in the field, from theoretically driven macroeconomic history to the political economy of monetary institutions and the historical evolution of monetary policies. Its thematic sections cover a wide range of topics, including the historical origins of money; money, coinage, and the state; trade, money markets, and international currencies; money and metals; monetary experiments; Asian monetary systems; exchange rate regimes; monetary integration; central banking and monetary policy; and aggregate price shocks.
The Road to Monetary Union analyses in non-technical language the process leading to adoption of a common currency for the European Union. The monetary union process involved different issues at different times and the contemporary global background mattered. The Element explains why monetary union was attempted and failed in the 1970s, and why the process was restarted in 1979, accelerated after 1992 and completed for a core group of EU members in 1999. It analyzes connections between eurozone membership and Greece's sovereign debt crisis. It concludes with analysis of how the eurozone works today and with discussion of its prospects for the 2020s. The approach is primarily economic, while acknowledging the role of politics (timing) and history (path dependence). A theme is to challenge simplistic ideas (e.g. that the euro has failed) with fuller analysis of competing pressures to shape the nature of monetary union.
This book brings together for the first time more than half a dozen proposals for an imperial paper currency in the mid-eighteenth century British Atlantic, to show how manage colonial currency and banking in the expanding empire. Existing studies have looked at the successes and failures of schemes in individual colonies. But some had grander ambitions, such as Benjamin Franklin, and offered proposals for ‘imperial’ or ‘continental’ paper currencies and monetary unions which would help knit together colonial territories throughout North America and even the Caribbean into a cohesive whole during a moment of imperial reform. This book brings together these proposals for the first time, including several never studied before, to show how thinkers and writers on empire, currency and finance drew on financial practices, precedents and principles from across the British Atlantic to present their own visions of monetary union and the future of empire. In doing so it makes an important and original contribution to the wider histories of monetary and financial thought and theory and the roots of American monetary policy, and the links between finance, empire, politics, reform and revolution. It will be of interest to academics working on the history of finance, banking and currency in the British Isles, North America and the Caribbean in the eighteenth century, as well as those working on the political economy of the British Empire, including mercantilism, trade, warfare and the politics of empire in the decades leading up to the American Revolution.
