This monograph presents an in-depth analysis of Belgium's monetary and financial history during the Second World War. Exploring Belgium's financial and business links with Germany, France, The Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the study focuses on the roles played by the Central Bank and private bankers in Brussels, by the Belgian government in exile in London, and by the Belgian minister plenipotentiary in New York. Among the subjects arising are: German attempts to plunder Belgium and Belgian resistance strategies; the peripeteia of the Belgian gold reserve; the role of the Belgian Congo; Belgium's participation in the discussions leading up to the Bretton Woods conference; and the negotiations for creating a Customs Union, blueprint for the 1958 Treaty of Rome. The final part of the book analyzes the famous monetary reform devised by Belgian Minister of Finance Camille Gutt at the liberation of the country in September 1944.

As a businessman, financier, diplomat, minister, and first Managing Director of the IMF, Camille Gutt (1884–1971) was involved in all the important financial negotiations between the 1920s and the 1950s. Using Gutt’s personal archives as his starting point, Crombois examines the rise and fall of financial diplomacy as a largely private enterprise.

During World War II, Germany occupied much of continental Europe. Although the social and political history of this occupation has been studied extensively, the economics of the unprecedented transfer of resources has received surprisingly little attention. Allies, neutrals, and conquered nations under German hegemony were a vital source of supplies for Hitler's war machine. Without the war material, consumer goods and labor they provided, Germany would not have been able to wage a prolonged multi-front war. All of these countries suffered enormous losses, but each had a distinct experience that depended on Germany's wartime needs, whether they were allied, occupied or neutral, and their place in Nazi racial ideology. Paying for Hitler's War is a comparative economic study which explores these different experiences through case studies of twelve nations spanning the European continent.

This book provides a broad overview of monetary developments in Norway over the past 200 years, using a rich variety of graphical illustrations based on a unique data set of historical monetary statistics, which will be documented and made available on the Norges Bank website (in English) at http://www.norges-bank.no/en. Throughout the book, Norway's monetary developments are anchored in a historical context and in the development of monetary thinking. Through their analysis of the historical data, the authors provide new insights and comparisons to other Scandinavian countries, along with an excellent examination of the development and character of the banking and financial system in Norway.

Explains the extent, necessity and importance of black-market activity in France during the Second World War.

With contributions from world-renowned figures such as Niall Ferguson and Adair Turner, this volume investigates how financial institutions and markets have undergone or reacted to past pressures, and the regulatory responses that emerged as a result.

Nazi Germany and Japan occupied huge areas at least for some period during World War II, and those territories became integral parts of their war economies. The book focuses on the policies of World War II aggressors in occupied countries. The unbalanced economic and financial relations were defined by administrative control, the implementation of institutions and a variety of military exploitation strategies. Plundering, looting and requisitions were frequent aggressive acts, but beyond these interventions by force, specific institutions were created to gain control over the occupied economies as a whole. An appropriate institutional setting was also crucial to give incentives to the companies in the occupied countries to produce munitions for the aggressors. The book explains the main fields of war exploitation (organisation and control, war financing and workforce recruitment). It substantiates these aspects in case studies of occupied countries and gives examples of the business policy of multinational companies under war conditions. The book also provides an account of differences and similarities of the two occupation systems. Economies under Occupation will interest researchers specialising in the history of economic thought as well as in economic theory and philosophy. It will also engage readers concerned with regional European and Japanese studies and imperial histories.

"The nation-state Belgium, born in 1830, and the polities that preceded it since ancient times, have played an important role in European and even global history. This introductory history offers a synthetical and non-specialist yet academically based view on the social, economic, political, and cultural aspects of its evolution"--

Norges Bank has been an integrated part of Norwegian economic development since the complicated birth of the new nation-state after the Napoleonic wars. This book traces its 200-year history, focusing on its relations with political institutions that have shaped and reshaped the bank's role since its establishment in 1816.

To some extent, because of his overlapping careers in academia and politics, the renowned tax scholar Peter Essers is known for his influential insight that ‘the effects of taxation on the political balance of power, and vice versa, are always interlinked with other phenomena, such as wars, crises, religious developments and inequalities in society’. In this widely ranging festschrift, thirty-six prominent tax scholars from all across Europe examine the legacy of Peter Essers’ research interests, from the larger philosophical, political, and social factors driving tax history to the reality of the taxing State as experienced by taxpayers and tax officials. The book’s outstanding overview of the most relevant technical and policy aspects of European and international taxation includes deeply thoughtful chapters on such topics and issues as the following: developing sustainable corporate tax governance; tax whistleblowing; transfer pricing; balancing qualitative and quantitative approaches to tax research; necessity to reach something close to ‘equal treatment’ between the upper and lower social classes; consent and democracy; tax rebellions; tax evasion and tax avoidance; taxation of cross-border remote workers and their employers; mitigation of double taxation of income earned by entertainers and sportspersons; and the international tax treaty network. More than a homage to this scholar’s far-reaching contributions, this book is remarkable for the variety and academic rigour of the chapters. The understanding its authors provide of both the broad contours and the intricacies of European and international taxation will be of inestimable value to tax practitioners, policymakers, tax consultants, and academics, as well as interested researchers in economics, political science, and sociology.