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This chapter discusses the presentation of the patterns of and the changes in exchange, based largely on archaeology, in particular on ceramic distributions. It argues that ceramics are the firmest support from any account of exchange in this period, and that written sources are a poor guide to the real patterns of exchange in this period. The importance of the archaeological argument made here makes it necessary to begin with the development of a set of criteria which allows one to move from archaeological evidence towards wider generalizations. The chapter presents an initial methodological section, an account of late Roman exchange, and the regional analyses of the individual social and economic developments of each of the regions of the post-Roman world.

The rise and fall of Argentina’s currency board illustrates the extent to which the advantages of hard pegs have been overstated. The currency board did not promote fiscal or monetary discipline, and fostered nominal stability and financial intermediation only at the cost of endogenous financial dollarization. Ultimately the failure adequately toaddress the currency-growth-debt trap, into which Argentina had fallen at the end of the 1990s, precipitated a run on the currency and on the banks, triggering a currency collapse and a sovereign debt default. The crisis, rooted in the underlying weaknesses of Argentina’s monetary regime, can best be interpreted as a bad outcome of a high-stakes strategy to overcome a weak-currency problem. To increase the credibility of the hard peg, the government raised its exit costs, which deepened the crisis once exit could no longer be avoided.

This chapter seeks to identify the social niches and the forms of status that could be found in the firm and test for the existence of the first mechanism that helped members manage their social resources in order to fulfil their commitment to a broadly understood labour contract — that is, generalized exchange within these niches and in the firm as a whole. It first identifies the resources exchanged and then uses various statistical analyses to confirm the existence of niches, identify their characteristics, and check for the presence of cycles of indirect reciprocity characterizing generalized exchange among members, particularly in the network of exchanges of the first basic resource — that is, co-workers' goodwill.

A great debate has been taking place in many nations, especially small ones, in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, in the Baltic States, and in the Americas on the need and benefits of abandoning the national currency in favor of the euro or the dollar. This chapter examines the benefits and costs of euroization or dollarization. It analyzes the ways in which the two processes are similar and different, and it examines their likely effect on the functioning of the present and future international monetary system.

The solidarity provided to members through a generalized exchange system in social niches is fragile, and status competition is a threat to the existence of such a positive social mechanism. This reiterates basic questions: how do niche seeking and status competition coexist, and are they not contradictory drives? This chapter is about coexistence, as it plays itself out in a process that helps the organization deal with the potentially negative effects of status competition. It describes the way in which the intersection of networks can help a social and informal mechanism that contributes to organizational governance.

The Second Amendment to the IMF Articles of Agreement (the Jamaica Agreement) did much more than simply legalize the floating exchange rate system. Of fundamental importance were decisions to accommodate a much greater role for SDRs in the future that were also incorporated in the new Articles. The legacy of the Second Amendment continues to facilitate this greater role today and this accomplishment is another example of a hitherto neglected legacy for SDRs. This is a relatively neglected but fundamentally important development in the history of SDRs.

Scots were ubiquitous in the North American fur trade. From the deerskin trade of the Southeast to their domination of the North West and Hudson Bay Companies in the North, they came into close contact with and lived and worked alongside the Indian peoples on whom the trade depended for its operation. This chapter examines the roles and experiences of Highland Scots and American Indians in the fur trade and the different meanings each attached to the exchange. It also focuses on individual traders to convey the varied personalities involved and to better understand their attitudes toward and dealings with Indian people.

The fixed exchange rate system had been abandoned back in 1971, raising questions at that time about the role of the International Monetary Fund. However, the abandonment of the fixed exchange rate system did not mark an end to crises; rather, they seemed to become both more frequent and of greater depth. When the Bretton Woods institutions were founded, there was a less well-developed theory of collective action that outlined the circumstances under which public, as opposed to private, action was desirable. There was, in particular, a less well-developed theory of market failure, of the circumstances under which markets by themselves did not yield efficient outcomes. This chapter explores the role of the Bretton Woods institutions from the perspective of global public goods and externalities. The discussion begins by focusing on the IMF, simply because there was, in its establishment, a clear vision of a global market failure that it was supposed to address.

This chapter first discusses the Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions (EAER) of the IMF and how this classification scheme is a reflection of the handling of exchange rates in the modern era. It explores how the IMF was able to survey and report on the exchange rate systems and exchange restrictions and how these reflected regimes. It also discusses the value and influence of the Bretton Woods system during the time, and how it ushered in the period of floating exchange rates. The chapter also discusses de facto exchange rate regime classifications, their characteristics and the importance of proper classification of these regimes. The chapter discusses several classification schemes, such as those of Jay Shambaugh, and Levy-Yeyati-Surzenegger, and how each of these schemes correlates with one another.

This chapter analyzes the relationship between exchange rate regimes, capital flows, and currency crises in emerging economies in the context of the implementation of a new financial architecture. It evaluates some proposals for reform of the international financial architecture that focus on exchange rate regimes and capital mobility. This chapter also examines the effectiveness of capital controls as a crisis prevention device and evaluates whether emerging markets can adapt to super-fixed or freely floating exchange rate system.

This chapter examines the quest for a new philosophy of the European Economic Community (EEC) exchange rate system, from Helmut Schmidt's “exotic idea” of late March 1978 to the publication of the Bremen Annex in mid-July of the same year. It begins with an overview of the monetary initiatives taken in March 1978, and culminating at the European Council in Copenhagen in early April 1978. It then considers the parallel attempts at hatching a new plan for European monetary cooperation, following the Copenhagen Summit, until the presentation of the Schulmann-Clappier draft that would form the basis of discussion at the Bremen European Council. It also traces the road to the production of the Bremen final communiqué that outlined the final guidelines of the European Monetary System. The chapter concludes by looking at the work (semi)secretly carried out by the so-called Group of Three, which devised what would become the Bremen Annex.

This chapter examines how the Western European governments and the European Economic Community (EEC) itself tried to move on after the failure of the Werner Plan, starting with the 1974–1975 initiative of the French government. More specifically, it considers the extent to which the partial buildup of consensus about the need for action at the European level and about the need to adopt stability-oriented economic policies led to the adoption of several proposals. The chapter first discusses the context in which these various proposals appeared before analyzing the parallel attempts of the EEC and the French government to set out an improved version of the EEC exchange rate system (known as the snake, created in 1972). It then assesses France's second attempt to achieve such reforms following the reentry of the French franc in the snake. It also explains how these proposals, especially the Fourcade memorandum, introduced at an EEC level a whole set of issues that would remain on its agenda for years to come.

This chapter examines the European Monetary System (EMS) negotiations from the Bremen European Council until late September 1978, when the debate over the role of the European Currency Unit in the new exchange rate system had been largely settled, and how such negotiations relate to monetary debates of the previous years. It first considers the early technical discussions leading up to the first post-Bremen Finance Council of July 24 and goes on to discuss the second phase of discussions in August, during which the European Economic Community (EEC) member states made their official positions known. It then assesses the progressive evolution of the negotiations along a Bundesbank-inspired line over the month of September. It also analyzes the “concurrent studies” and the emergence of differing opinions on the most important points concerning the exchange rate system.

This chapter focuses on the end of the European Monetary System (EMS) negotiations and the launch of the new exchange rate system. The discussion covers the second and last phase of the negotiations, from the decision to adopt a Parity grid system until the entry into force of the EMS in March 1979. It first considers how the various negotiators involved decided on the functioning of the “Belgian compromise,” that is, how the divergence indicator would operate. It then examines the consequences of the agreement on the Parity grid system, along with the intensification of political contacts in order to win the participation in the EMS of the British, Irish, and Italian governments. It also comments on the end of the concurrent studies and the extent to which their deadlock had the potential to become an obstacle for the inception of the EMS as a whole. The chapter concludes by looking at the Brussels European Council and the delayed launch of the EMS.

Polanyi spoke of the commodification of money, and this chapter focuses on how interest-bearing debt became the major dynamic, also contributing to the commodification of land and labor. By the late third millennium BC the main way to obtain manual labor was to lend money and make debtors work off their debts as an antichretic interest charge. Personal debt became the lever for creditors to pry land out of the clan-based tenure system, mainly for sale under economic duress. Debtors who pledged their crop or land rights usually ended up forfeiting them. This alienation catalyzed the ‘commodification’ of land. By tracing these debt dynamics, the new economic archaeology is compatible with Polanyi’s intuitions and recognition that market relations are embedded in social relations, and extends his analysis in tracing how administered pricing and monetary valuations created the preconditions for market exchange. The earliest markets, credit and land tenure systems were regulated. Administered pricing was a precondition for creating weights, measures and price equivalencies to enable market exchange to evolve more flexibly.