Policy Center for the New South

Bretton Woods system: did we throw the baby out with the bathwater ? Lessons for developing economies

The world economy has gone through several systems to determine a value between country’s currencies. After the Second World War and the so-called gold standards, major world economies engaged into a system of fixed exchange rate of currencies against the dollar and, the whole system was backed by the value of USD against gold. After the end of that mechanism known as the Bretton Wood system in the 1970s, major world economies decided to liberalize the system of international exchange rate system. The common wisdom was to consider that...