Dear all,

This Wednesday, on May 14th, James Ashley Morrison will be presenting the topic "Shocking Intellectual Austerity: The Role of Ideas in the Demise of the Gold Standard in Britain" at the HPPE seminar. The seminar will take place in the room EAS E 168 (East Building) at 1 pm at the London School of Economics. Everyone is welcome.

Abstract
Britain’s 1931 suspension of the gold standard remains one of the most shocking policy shifts of the last century. Conventional explanations focus on changing international conditions alongside the rise of social democracy: when Britons refused to shoulder the increasing costs of defending the exchange rate, the Bank of England was “forced” to abandon the gold standard. This paper refocuses attention on policymakers’ mental models at critical moments. Drawing upon previously missed primary sources, it reveals a cleavage within the Bank over the appropriate response to the flight from sterling. Following the collapse of the Bank’s governor, the deputy governor shifted the Bank’s strategy from making defensive rate hikes to pursuing fiscal austerity. He then prematurely suspended gold convertibility in a gambit to save the gold standard coalition in Parliament from electoral defeat. When the unintended experiment with a managed float proved successful, Britain embraced the new exchange rate regime.


About the presenter
As an undergraduate, I studied history at the University of Chicago and Cambridge University. I then began a PhD in history at Stanford University; but I switched into political science halfway through. In 2008, I began in political science at Middlebury College. Last year, I was on leave at Princeton University. I began at the LSE (IR Department) this past autumn.
I am particularly interested in international political economy and the history of political and economic ideas. My current book project analyzes the influence of three seminal theorists--John Locke, Adam Smith, and JM Keynes--on pivotal shifts in Britain's foreign economic policy across the last several centuries.



The rest of the HPPE programme for the Summer term is available at : http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/seminars/HPPE/home.aspx

All queries about the seminar can be addressed to Gerardo Serra ([log in to unmask]).

Kind regards,
Gerardo Serra and Raphaelle Schwarzberg

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