The monetary conservative : Jacques Rueff and twentieth-century free market thought / Christopher S. Chivvis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chivvis, Christopher S.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rueff, Jacques.

Economists--France.

Economists.

Free enterprise.

France.

Physical Description:

xiv, 234 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

DeKalb : Northern Illinois University Press, [2010]

Summary:

One of the 20th century's most prescient critics of the role of the U.S. dollar in the global economy, Jacques Rueff (1896-1978) was also one of Europe's foremost free market thinkers, a proponent of the gold standard, and a major expert on the perils of inflation. In Rueff's day, moderate conservatism was linked with liberal political economy, and Rueff considered himself a "liberal" in the sense that he believed in the free market. This first major English-language work on Rueff explains his economic philosophy and its significance for the present, placing it in the context of the Great Depression and Europe's post-World War II recovery.Chivvis presents a new angle on the history of free market ideas and their alternatives, illuminating a conservative strain of free market thought hitherto much ignored. Rueff's thought remains highly relevant in the current economic climate, and The Monetary Conservative will be of broad interest to policymakers and educated lay readers. It is also essential reading for economists, political economists, and historians of neoliberalism, France, and modern European politics.

Contents:

The engineer economist

The failure of postwar reconstruction

Rueff and French economic strategy during the Depression

The crisis of liberalism and the future of liberal capitalism in the 1930s

L'ordre social and the war

Reconstruction and inflation

Keynes, the postwar "age of inflation," and European integration

De Gaulle, the 1958 reform, and the franc nouveau

De Gaulle, gold, and the dollar

Conclusion: Rueff and monetary conservatism in twentieth-century perspective.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780875804170

0875804179

OCLC:

440562910