The Global Monetary System After the Fall of the Soviet Empire

This book is a collection of papers presented at a conference held at Castle Szirak, Hungary in memoriam of Robert Triffin, the Belgian-American economist, who taught at Yale (1958-1977). From 1946 almost to his death he was a leading contributor to the creation of the post-war international monetary system, as embodied in the European Payments Union (1950), the First Amendment of the International Monetary Fund (1969), and the European Monetary System (1979). This book pays tribute to Triffin's life. Most of the essays are written in his spirit and frame of mind. He fought for the establishment of the "monetary rule", a set of principles and international agreements which promoted stability in international currency markets as one of the foundations of non-inflationary economic growth. Since the 1970s, opposite political forces have created today's high inflation-low growth economy, even in the industrially most developed countries. The resulting present monetary arrangements make dealing with the post-Soviet challenges difficult. This book reaches back to Triffin's essentially neo-Keynesian inspiration.
It presents several essays with the main conclusion that a return to the "monetary rule" and to the greater use of "special drawing rights" are important not only for the rebuilding of the shattered economies of Central and Eastern Europe, but also for global monetary and economic growth and stability.