Keynes’s Analysis of External Payments and the Plans for a World Monetary Reform

Keynes’s interest in international payments goes back at least to the late 1910s, when he dealt with the reparations of the First World War, and was later fed by the debates with Ohlin and Rueff. Keynes’s contribution to the field of international economics was certainly original insofar as it suggested, for the first time in a systematic way, the creation of an international currency as a means of payments. This chapter carries out a critical reappraisal of these authors’ contributions, stressing the need for an international monetary intermediary and multilateral clearing as a mechanism enabling for the real payment of international transactions. The chapter also provides a critical study of the plans of international monetary reform before and after Bretton Woods, from Schumacher’s to Bernstein’s, from Triffin’s to Stamp’s.