Harvard Economic Studies

Marked changes in the world’s commercial and financial situation since the war have inevitably drawn an increasing amount of attention to international exchange and to the conditions that govern its terms. The present study is directed to one aspect of these conditions. In the first two sections Professor Angell traces the origin and development of the characteristic English theory of international exchange and the criticisms to which Continental economists subjected it. In the third section he attacks his subject from a fresh angle, taking into account at every point the nature of present-day banking and financial conditions and the many unprecedented phenomena the world has witnessed since 1914. His deductions will naturally awaken discussion both among bankers and among students of economics, and should result in a considerable clarifying of thought and practice on this vexed question of our time.

Perry Mehrling tells a story of continuity around the crucial question of the role of money in American democracy through the ideas and lives of three prominent institutionalists—Allyn Young, Alvin Hansen, and Edward Shaw.