Central banking under the gold standard: Rist versus Hawtrey on the policy of the bank of France from 1928 to 1931

Abstract

It is widely believed that the difficult return to the gold standard during the 1920s and its demise in 1931 intensified the Great Depression. An interesting way of thinking about national and international monetary mechanisms emerged from the debates between French and British policymakers during those years. We attempt to explain the limited cooperation between the Bank of France and the Bank of England during that period of political tension by examining the monetary thinking of Charles Rist and Ralph George Hawtrey. Both were involved in the controversy over the strategy of the Bank of France, which accumulated – and was accused of sterilizing – gold between 1928 and 1931.