• DOI:10.1017/S1361491609990153
Corpus ID: 154773110

The Rise and Fall of the Dollar, or When Did the Dollar Replace Sterling as the Leading Reserve Currency?

@article{Eichengreen2008TheRA,
  title={The Rise and Fall of the Dollar, or When Did the Dollar Replace Sterling as the Leading Reserve Currency?},
  author={Barry J. Eichengreen and Marc Flandreau},
  journal={Economic History},
  year={2008}
}

• Barry J. Eichengreen, Marc Flandreau
• Published 2008
• Economics
• Economic History

We present new evidence on the currency composition of foreign exchange reserves in the 1920s and 1930s. Contrary to the presumption that the pound sterling continued to dominate the U.S. dollar in central bank reserves until after World War II, we show that the dollar first overtook sterling in the mid-1920s. This suggests that the network effects thought to lend inertia to international currency status and to create incumbency advantages for the dominant international currency do not apply in… Expand