ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: The pre-Bretton Woods Monetary Order: A study of Harry Dexter White's Contribution to International Monetary Reforms
Author: Rojas Pierre-Hernan
Harry Dexter White is known as the Treasury official leading the US delegation during the Bretton Woods conference in July 1944. But his British counterpart, John Maynard Keynes, the foremost economist during the interwar years, put White in the shade. Nonetheless, far from being solely a bureaucratic and technical economist of the US Treasury, White proved that he was a skillful, hard-worker and a formidable opponent to Keynes during the negotiations (Harrod, 1951: 537-538). Some recent studies portray White as a Keynesian and an international monetary economist (Boughton, 2001, 2002 & 2004), specialist on monetary and banking issues thanks to his carrier in the Treasury from 1934 to 1941 (Rees, 1973 & Steil, 2013). Schwartz (1997) and Bordo & Schwartz (2001) stress the influence of White’s experience at the Exchange Stabilization Fund on his plans for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. All of these works shed light on the professional process of White, from his doctorate getting in Harvard in 1930 to his ascension at the Treasury. Nevertheless, none of these works links White’s monetary approach with his attempt to restore the stability of the international monetary system in the 1930s. From the outset in the Treasury, White put a gold standard reform forward, both at the national and international level. This paper deals with White’s monetary reforms proposals in depth during the 1930s in order to promote an open trading system, full employment and economic stability.
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