Controlling Capital Flows “At Both Ends”: A Neglected (but Newly Relevant) Keynesian Innovation from Bretton Woods

Abstract

John Maynard Keynes had been concerned with controlling speculative movements of capital internationally and finding a cooperative way to control them among nations. Financial crises of 1997–1998 and 2008 have raised the profile once again of Keynes’s concerns. The author outlines Keynes’s thinking back to 1944, which argued for capital controls from both donor and recipient countries. He explains why Keynes’s ideas on this issue are relevant today, though they were watered down back then.