This paper examines the alternative views of fixed versus floating exchange rates presented in Gottfried Haberler's Prosperity and Depression (1937) and Ragnar Nurkse's Interwar Currency Experience (1944). It shows how Haberler presented a model of exchange rates that is an anticipation of the...

From the perspective of the late 1930s and 1940s the dominant view was that the inter-war currency experience was a financial disaster. The view is perfectly encapsulated in the League of Nations' publication The Inter-war Currency Experience, the bulk of which was written by Ragnar Nurkse and...

At the close of the Second World War, when industrialized nations faced serious trade and financial imbalances, delegates from forty-four countries met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in order to reconstruct the international monetary system. In this volume, three generations of scholars and...