题目：A Retrospective on the Classical Gold Standard, 1821-1931

作者：Michael D. Bordo and Anna J. Schwartz, editors

大小：8.13M/666页

格式：PDF

Publisher：University of Chicago Press

Introduction：Anna J. Schwartz
Britain's abandonment of the gold standard in 1931 signaled the end of
the gold standard era. The new technical economic insights and improvements
in statistical and computational techniques that have developed in
the half century since then constitute part of the motivation for organizing
a conference on the gold standard at this juncture-they should make
it possible to mine new nuggets of knowledge from the historical evidence.
In addition, recent experience with floating exchange rates and
unstable domestic monetary policies has made that historical evidence
seem highly relevant to today's problems. Much professional attention is
once again focused on the merits of fixed exchange rates and constraints
on domestic monetary autonomy.
We date the start of the gold standard era in 1821, when Britain
resumed specie payments at the parity that had pevailed before the
Napoleonic Wars, indeed, from 1717 on. By the end of the era, 110 years
later, the gold standard had been transmuted. In the pre-World War I
period, it evolved as a system in which countries redeemed their domestic
currencies in gold and in which the offsetting of gold flows by monetary
authorities to maintain existing monetary conditions, though it occurred
from time to time, was not regarded as proper conduct. England-the
world's largest trading nation, the center of the world's commodities
markets and of the world's gold market, and the world's leading creditor
nation-played a central role differing from that of other countries.
Though gold was the key reserve, many countries in addition held foreign
exchange (largely though not exclusively in sterling), in itself an indication
of confidence in the stability of exchange rates. By 1931, gold coins
did not circulate in most countries on the gold standard, and paper
currency could be redeemed for gold only under severe limits. Sterilization
of gold flows was accepted as a desirable way to limit the internal
monetary effects of gold flows. New York rivaled London as a second
reserve center. The resultant destabilizing shifts of foreign-exchange
reserves from the center experiencing gold losses to the other center led
to a loss of confidence in the stability of exchange rates (Dam 1982, pp.
24-60).
The studies undertaken for this conference were designed to deepen
our understanding of the functioning of the historical gold standard. A
major by-product is to affect our response to such current economic
questions as the recent resurgence of interest in a gold standard as a
solution to problems of inflation, high interest rates, and low productivity.
The history of the gold standard may be examined from many perspectives.
The conference concentrated on five:
1. What were the main themes of the traditional literature on the gold
standard, spanning several centuries, compared to the themes stressed in
the analysis associated with the post-World War II monetary approach to
the balance of payments?
2. Did operating procedures of the Bank of England before 1914
conform to theoretical notions of the ideal functioning of the gold standard?
3. What was the experience of a sample of four countries, with and
without a formal central bank (Canada, Germany, Italy, and Sweden), in
the gold standard era? This evidence was designed to supplement more
extensive knowledge of the operation of the gold standard in the United
States and Great Britain.
4. What links integrated the international monetary system under the
gold standard?
5. Did the gold standard stabilize commodity prices?
The conference was enlivened by the expression of strong conflicting
views on fundamental issues. One such issue was the significance of
purchasing-power parity and interest-rate parity. Do independent
monetary policies have any role under fixed exchange rates if purchasingpower
and interest-rate parity are important? Another issue was the role
of central banks under the gold standard. Did these institutions, or less
formal ones that performed similar functions, impede or assist the operation
of the gold standard, or were they irrelevant, so that the operation of
the gold standard was automatic? The pre-World War I period was
characterized by economic growth and expanding world trade. Did
adherence to fixed exchange rates under the gold standard playa major
role in producing growth or was it largely irrelevant to growth? The
importance of accounting for the links across the Atlantic under the
pre-World War I gold standard was stressed by some participants,
whereas at least one participant questioned the validity of the concept of
an Atlantic economy. The reality of trend movements in commodity
prices and long-term interest rates under the gold standard was another
subject of debate at the conference. Was it visual spurious regression that
produced the appearance of trends or did economic agents apprehend the
trends as actualities? The conference did not settle these issues, but
future investigators will need to confront them in dealing with the international
monetary system.
The studies that were prepared for the conference relied on various
modes of analysis. Several were based on historical nonquantitative
evidence. Some adapted the National Bureau business-cycle analysis.
Others used regression analysis. Several studies presented Granger-Sims
tests and analyses of ARIMA techniques. One general question that
arises with high-powered statistical tests applied to pre-World War I data
is the validity of the results, given the questionable reliability of some of
the underlying data. Economists may nevertheless welcome the findings
as a starting point for further refinement of hypotheses and a spur to
efforts to improve the data sets.
Section 1 of this introduction summarizes the five sessions of the
conference, highlighting unresolved issues. Contemporaries regarded
the gold standard as a qualified success yet later observers gave a less
favorable account of the era. Section 2 attempts to account for the change
in views. The implications of the findings of the conference studies and of
Leland Yeager's suggestive talk at a dinner session form the basis for the
speculations in the concluding section 3 on the prospects for reinstating a
gold standard.