Handbook of Safeguarding Global Financial Stability

Chapter 38

Development and Evolution of International Financial Architecture

F. Capie

City University, London, UK

Outline

Introduction

Metallic Standards

What Did Gold Provide?

Interwar

War and Redesign

Bretton Woods

Post-Bretton Woods

Conclusion

Glossary

Further Reading

Introduction

The use of money goes back to the earliest kind of exchange and can be traced to settled societies 4000 years ago. But, none of these early uses of money meant there were monetary economies, far less international monetary arrangements; monetary economies are much more recent and date to parts of medieval Europe. International monetary relations developed sometime after that, perhaps in the late medieval and early modern period – 1400–1700. But, there was no international ...