This history of sterling shows how the Bank of England defended the pound and managed foreign exchange.

The special task of this book is to present a statistical and theoretical analysis of the relation between the quantity of money and other key economic magnitudes over periods longer than those dominated by cyclical fluctuations-hence the term trends in the title. This book is not restricted to the United States but includes comparable data for the United Kingdom.

Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600-1775: A Handbook

“Magisterial. . . . The direct and indirect influence of the Monetary History would be difficult to overstate.”—Ben S. Bernanke, Nobel Prize–winning economist and former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve From Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman and his celebrated colleague Anna Jacobson Schwartz, one of the most important economics books of the twentieth century—the landmark work that rewrote the story of the Great Depression and the understanding of monetary policy Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 is one of the most influential economics books of the twentieth century. A landmark achievement, it marshaled massive historical data and sharp analytics to argue that monetary policy—steady control of the money supply—matters profoundly in the management of the nation’s economy, especially in navigating serious economic fluctuations. One of the book’s most important chapters, “The Great Contraction, 1929–33” addressed the central economic event of the twentieth century, the Great Depression. Friedman and Schwartz argued that the Federal Reserve could have stemmed the severity of the Depression, but failed to exercise its role of managing the monetary system and countering banking panics. The book served as a clarion call to the monetarist school of thought by emphasizing the importance of the money supply in the functioning of the economy—an idea that has come to shape the actions of central banks worldwide.

This 1988 reference book provides the major economic and social statistical series for the British Isles from the twelfth century up until 1980-81. The text provides informed access to a wide range of economic data, without the labour of identifying sources or of transforming many different annual sources into a comparable time series.

The problems of exchange rate misalignments and the resulting payments imbalances have plagued the world economy for decades. At the Louvre Accord of 1987, the Group of Five industrial countries adopted a system of reference ranges for exchange rate management, influenced by proposals of C. Fred Bergstan and John Williamson for a target zone system. The reference range approach has, however, been operated only intermittently and half-heartedly, and questions continue to be raised in policy and scholarly circles about the design and operation of a full-fledged target zone regime. This volume, with chapters by leading international economists, explores one crucial issue in the design of a target zone system: the problem of calculating Williamson's concept of the fundamental equilibrium exchange rate (FEER). Williamson contributes an overview of the policy and analytic issues and a second chapter on his own calculations.

Discusses the contribution of ERM membership to Britain's economic performance. This book suggests that Britain joined the ERM 'in despair' after trying various methods of controlling monetary growth without the success that had been anticipated. It discusses how the membership was a precondition for the adoption of a stable monetary arrangement.

____________________ The authorised history of the Bank of England by the bestselling David Kynaston, 'the most entertaining historian alive' (Spectator). 'Kynaston's aim is to provide a history of the Bank for the general reader and in this he triumphantly succeeds, providing a worthy complement to the notable series of books on different periods of the Bank's history ... wonderfully readable' Financial Times 'Not an ordinary bank, but a great engine of state,' Adam Smith declared of the Bank of England as long ago as 1776. The Bank is now over 320 years old, and throughout almost all that time it has been central to British history. Yet to most people, despite its increasingly high profile, its history is largely unknown. Till Time's Last Sand by David Kynaston is the first authoritative and accessible single-volume history of the Bank of England, opening with the Bank's founding in 1694 in the midst of the English financial revolution and closing in 2013 with Mark Carney succeeding Mervyn King as Governor. This is a history that fully addresses the important debates over the years about the Bank's purpose and modes of operation and that covers such aspects as monetary and exchange-rate policies and relations with government, the City and other central banks. Yet this is also a narrative that does full justice to the leading episodes and characters of the Bank, while taking care to evoke a real sense of the place itself, with its often distinctively domestic side. Deploying an array of piquant and revealing material from the Bank's rich archives, Till Time's Last Sand is a multi-layered and insightful portrait of one of our most important national institutions, from one of our leading historians. ____________________ 'The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has been waiting for a biographer who could do justice to the richness of her story ... This is the work of a scholar with a gift for illuminating every square inch of each enormous canvas he chooses to paint ... Kynaston brings characters large and small to life' Literary Review 'full of human detail ... an exemplary narrative history, with the archives plundered judiciously and plenty of focus on people and their quirks ... rendered on an entertainingly human scale' The Times 'A triumph ... this portrait of the Bank of England really is fascinating, at times even gripping' Sunday Telegraph