This is a reassessment of the international monetary crises of the post-World War I period, that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It also analyzes the responses of the world's economic powers to the Depression and how new monetary policies set the stage for the watershed post-World War II system established at Bretton Woods. It offers new theories of what effect the Great Depression had on the collapse of the world monetary system, and what effect the collapse had on deepening and prolonging the Depression, by exploring the link between global economic crises and the the gold standard (the framework for international monetary affairs until 1931).

Barry Eichengreen (born 1952) is an American economist who holds the title of George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987.[2] Eichengreen's mother is Lucille Eichengreen, a Holocaust survivor and author.

He has done research and published widely on the history and current operation of the international monetary and financial system. He received his BA from UC Santa Cruz and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1979. He was a senior policy advisor to the International Monetary Fund in 1997 and 1998, although he has since been critical of the IMF.

His best known work is the book Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919–1939, Oxford University Press,