Robert Triffin

With World War II still raging, nations came together to create a new international monetary order, the Bretton Woods system. This agreement created the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and a system of stable exchange rates with currencies pegged against the dollar. One man saw the political, economic, and moral tensions inherent in keeping the dollar, a national currency, as a global reserve currency. When the monetary arrangement collapsed in 1973, economist Robert Triffin had already predicted its downfall two decades previously. Robert Triffin, a Belgian-American scholar and policy advisor, was a defining voice in economics and international politics in the twentieth century and an architect of the new multilateral liberal world order in his own right. Best known for his analysis of the vulnerabilities of the international monetary system – the “Triffin dilemma” – Triffin was a voice of reason and compassion in the postwar period. Triffin played a key role in the debates on European monetary integration, especially with his proposals for a European Reserve Fund and a European currency unit, becoming one of the intellectual fathers of Europe’s single currency, the euro. This intellectual biography evaluates what made Triffin a crucial figure in modern economic history. With an emphasis on the ideas that shaped the postwar international system, Robert Triffin: A Life explores both the man and the mission. In addition to analyzing his work in economics and policymaking, Ivo Maes and Ilaria Pasotti trace Triffin’s story from a very modest background, as the son of a butcher, who grew up through the interwar period, to a singularly influential economist in the late twentieth century. The first biography of one of the intellectual giants of the postwar era, Robert Triffin critically examines the accomplishments and the legacy of a scholar who believed that innovations in economic policy could lead to a better and more peaceful world.