SDR: from Bretton Woods to a world currency

Elena Flor

SDR: from Bretton Woods
to a world currency

Federalism

Vol. 11

This book is jointly published by the Robert Triffin International (www.triffininternational.eu) and the Centro Studi sul Federalismo (www.csfederalismo.it).

This publication has been peer reviewed.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photocopy, microfilm or any other means, without prior written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

© P.I.E. PETER LANG s.a.

International Academic Publishers

Brussels, 2019

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brussels@peterlang.com; www.peterlang.com

ISSN 2294-6969

ISBN 978-2-8076-1017-0

ePDF 978-2-8076-1018-7

ePUB 978-2-8076-1019-4

MOBI 978-2-8076-1020-0

DOI 10.3726/b15076

D/2018/5678/103

Bibliographic information published by “Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek”.

“Die Deutsche National Bibliothek” lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at <http://dnb.de>.

About the author

Elena Flor is Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Intesa Sanpaolo Bank. She is Secretary General of the Robert Triffin International and Board member of the Italian Sustainable Investment Forum ((ItaSIF) and of the Associazione Studi e Ricerche sul Mezzogiorno (SRM).

About the book

Keynes’s proposal in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference to found the new international monetary system on a world currency (the “bancor”) was rejected and the dollar – convertible into gold – was put at the center of the system.

In 1968 the IMF created its own “unit of account” – the SDR – based on a basket of national currencies and, in 1971, president Nixon announced the end of dollar convertibility to gold.

In 2008 the financial crisis erupted and in 2016 the renminbi was included in the SDR basket: a new international multi-currency reserve system is emerging.

This work offers a synthetic but comprehensive view of the international monetary system’s evolution from an original perspective: the process for reinforcing and stabilizing it through the gradual introduction of a world currency (notably, the SDR).

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1. The Bretton Woods Conference (1944)

Chapter 2. Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) and the End of the Bretton Woods System (1967-1981)

Chapter 3. The First Short Life of the Market for SDR-Denominated Financial Instruments (1975-1985)

Chapter 4. The Long Life of European Baskets, the EUA and the ECU, up to the Euro (1950-1999)

Chapter 5. The ECU Market (1978-1999): A Model for Relaunching the SDR

Chapter 6. IMF Reform after the Crisis: The Increase in Quotas and the SDR Allocation (2009-2016)

Chapter 7. China’s Return to the World Economy Culminating in the Inclusion of the Renminbi in the SDR basket (2016)

Chapter 8. The Multi-Currency System and the Future of the SDR