Bretton Goods

This is part one in a multiple part series on the USD’s role as a reserve currency. The TL;DR (Too Long Didn't Read) The US Dollar is used very frequently in international trade even among countries that do not use it domestically. This happens because it has very strong network effects

Since it's the 50th anniversary of the end of Bretton Woods on 15th, I’m writing a multi-part series on the history of international monetary regimes. Global monetary history is interesting because it involves countries going on some commodity standard (gold, silver or even a combined bimetallic standard) and then going off it when times are bad. Then, w…

PM Modi during Independence Day 2021 Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India would achieve carbon net-zero emissions by 2070. This is easier said than done, and for some good reasons. First, India has many years of economic growth ahead of itself. Before the pandemic India had a GDP/capita (PPP adjusted) of ~$7k far lower than China at $16k, J…

Thanks to Sam Enright, Fergus McCullough, Nihal Sahu and Judah for their comments on this Making public policy is hard. For even the most simple policy change, such as an increase in the goods and services tax, there are multiple factors to consider (will people cut back spending? How much revenue will it raise? Is it worth it?) and multiple stakeholder…

TL;DR Economic development is dependent on the deal between elites of a country. In most poor countries, elites choose to extract resources from the economy because the policies that lead to development can endanger their political position. When elites decide to have pro-growth policies,

TL;DR Pakistan’s current economic crisis is caused by a spike in oil and gas prices leading to a sharp drop in foreign exchange reserves. The government has reserves worth a month of imports and would not have met their debt commitments without an IMF bailout.