Fed in Print

Abstract

This paper describes the doctrinal foundations of Federal Reserve policy from the establishment of the institution through the early 1930s, focusing on the role of international factors in those doctrines and conceptions. International considerations were at most part of the constellation of factors shaping the Federal Reserve’s outlook and policies even in the high gold standard era that ended in 1933. However, neither was the influence of international factors absent, much less negligible. Nor were the Fed’s policies without consequences for the rest of the world. Having described the doctrinal foundations of Federal Reserve policy, I analyze how the doctrines in question influenced the central bank’s actions and shaped the impact of monetary policy on a number of key occasions, focusing in particular on episodes where the international economy and the rest of the world played an important role.

Barry Eichengreen, Doctrinal determinants, domestic and international of Federal Reserve policy, 1914-1933, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Globalization Institute Working Papers 195, 01 Oct 2014.

Note: Published as: Eichengreen, Barry (2016), "Doctrinal Determinants, Domestic and International, of Federal Reserve Policy 1914-1933," in The Federal Reserve's Role in the Global Economy: A Historical Perspective, ed. Michael D. Bordo and Mark A. Wynne (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press), 14-49.

JEL Classification:

E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

Fed-in-Print is the central catalog of publications within the Federal Reserve System. It is managed and hosted by the Economic Research Division, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

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