| 来源类型 | Working Paper |
| 规范类型 | 报告 |
| DOI | 10.3386/w24195 |
| 来源ID | Working Paper 24195 |
| Triffin: dilemma or myth? | |
| Michael D. Bordo; Robert N. McCauley | |
| 发表日期 | 2018-01-15 |
| 出版年 | 2018 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | Triffin gained enormous influence by reviving the interwar story that gold scarcity threatened deflation. In particular, he held that central banks needed to accumulate claims on the United States to back money growth. But the claims would eventually surpass the US gold stock and then central banks would inevitably stage a run on it. He feared that the resulting high US interest rates would cause global deflation. However, we show that the US gold position after WWII was no worse than the UK position in 1900. Yet it took WWI to break sterling’s gold link. And better and feasible US policies could have kept Bretton Woods going. This history serves as a backdrop to our critical review of two later extensions of Triffin. One holds that the dollar’s reserve role required US current account deficits. This current account Triffin is popular, but anachronistic, and flawed in logic and fact. Nevertheless, it pops up in debates over the euro’s and the renminbi’s reserve roles. A fiscal Triffin holds that global demand for safe assets will either remain dangerously unsatisfied, or force excessive US fiscal debt. Less flawed, this story posits implausibly inflexible demand for and supply of safe assets. Thus, these stories do not convince in their own terms. Moreover, each lacks Triffin’s clear cross-over point from a stable system to an unstable one. Triffin’s seeming predictive success leads economists to wrap his brand around dissimilar stories. Yet Triffin’s dilemma in its most general form correctly points to the conflicts and difficulties that arise when a national currency plays a role as an international public good. |
| 主题 | International Economics ; International Finance ; International Macroeconomics ; Public Economics ; National Fiscal Issues |
| URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w24195 |
| 来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
| 引用统计 | |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/581869 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Michael D. Bordo,Robert N. McCauley. Triffin: dilemma or myth?. 2018. |
| 条目包含的文件 | ||||||
| 文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
| w24195.pdf（768KB） | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 | ||
除非特别说明，本系统中所有内容都受版权保护，并保留所有权利。
