TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bordo,Michael D.
AU  - Hautcoeur,Pierre-Cyrille
TI  - Why didn't France follow the British Stabilization after World War One?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9860
PY  - 2003
Y2  - July 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9860
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9860.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael D. Bordo
Department of Economics
Rutgers University
New Jersey Hall
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Tel: 732/822-7152
Fax: 732/932-7416
E-Mail: bordo@econ.rutgers.edu

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur
Paris School of Economics
48, bd Jourdan
75014 Paris
France
E-Mail: hautcoeur@pse.ens.fr
AB  - We show that the size of the public debt, the budget deficit and the monetary overhang made it impossible for France to stabilize its price level and return to the pre-war parity immediately after World War I, even on the anti-keynesian assumption that a stabilization would not have had any negative effects on real income. The reason for the immediate postwar inflation then was not mismanaged policy but a wise choice in the French context. Nevertheless, a stabilization at a devalued franc which would have been substantially higher than the rate achieved by Poincar‚‚ in 1926 was historically possible in early 1924, and it would likely have benefited not only France but the entire international monetary system.
ER  -