Keynes's ideal post-war vision for monetary reform included commodity index as the unit of account.

What is it about?

"Keynes and the international monetary system: Time for a tabular standard?" by myself and coauthors Armin Haas, Klaus Topfer and Carlo Jaeger. We argue that Keynes' ideal post-war vision for international monetary reform went beyond the international clearing union, Bancor accounts, fixed but adjustable exchange rates, and commodity buffer stocks. If it had been politically viable Keynes would have proposed a Bancor managed under commodity tabular standard rules. The paper revolves around a central quote that has been ignored by most post Keynesians: "I have no quarrel with a tabular standard as being intrinsically more sensible than gold. My own sympathies have always fallen that way. I hope the world will come to some version of it some time. But ... the right way to approach the tabular standard is to evolve a technique and to accustom men’s minds to the idea through international buffer stocks. When we have thoroughly mastered the technique of these, which is sufficiently difficult without the further complications of the tabular standard and the oppositions and prejudices which this must overcome, it will be time enough to think again." (Keynes 1944, The Economic Journal, 54 (215/216) p. 39) The date of this quote is after the Bretton Woods agreements when most countries agreed to fix their exchange rates to gold and the USD. We conclude that Keynes held onto the commodity tabular standard and fixed (but adjustable) exchange rates for international monetary reform as a futuristic goal, to be implemented once it was better understood and its oppositions and prejudices were overcome.

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Why is it important?

The title includes a question mark: "Keynes and the international monetary system: Time for a tabular standard?" for two reasons. Firstly, we claim that Keynes supported a commodity tabular standard as an optimal international unit of account for most of his career and for optimal future policy. Most economists familiar with this topic would limit Keynes's advocacy of this policy to his 1930 Treatise on Money. Secondly, there is an unstated suggestion that a tabular standard might not only have been a vision for the 1930s, or the 1940s, but even beyond this point, even today.

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