Globalizing capital

Across roughly a century and a half, the global system of money and cross-border finance has changed shape several times. Eichengreen traces that evolution in a compact, clearly written volume. He argues that the workings of international monetary arrangements, and the principles that might guide them, become intelligible only when viewed as a sequence of historical stages: the classical gold standard, the turbulent years between the world wars, the postwar order established at Bretton Woods, and the era of floating exchange rates that began after 1973.

The book is written for more than professional economists. Historians, political scientists, officials in government, business leaders, and any reader curious about how international economic and political relations are connected will find it accessible. Its focus stays on the institutions and decisions that shaped the monetary system rather than on technical modeling.