"This paper places current efforts at international economic policy coordination in historical perspective. It argues that successful cooperation is most likely in four sets of circumstances. First, when it centers on technical issues. Second, when cooperation is institutionalized - when...

"We describe in this essay why the gold standard and the euro are extreme forms of fixed exchange rates, and how these policies had their most potent effects in the worst peaceful economic periods in modern times. While we are lucky to have avoided another catastrophe like the Great Depression...

I provide a structured comparison of the nineteenth-century classical gold standard and the Euro, basing my analysis heavily on recent research. Both similarities and differences are evident in the historical record. Both regimes were vaunted as engines of convergence, but in both cases...