Sterling's farewell symphony
The end of the Sterling Area revisited
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3223606 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alan De Bromhead (0000-0003-4704-2331, Management School, Queen's University Belfast), David P Jordan (0000-0003-1776-4245, Management School, Queen's University Belfast), David Jordan (0000-0003-0579-3348), Flo Kennedy (0000-0001-7242-4927, Management School, Queen's University Belfast), Francis Kennedy, Jack Seddon (0000-0003-0022-9895, School of Political Science and Economics Waseda University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 76 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 415-444 |
| Publication date | 2023-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ehr.13175 |
| OpenAlex | W4285594114 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 49 |
When and why did Sterling Area countries stop holding sterling as the majority of their foreign exchange reserves? This paper takes a comparative approach to examine the relative importance of various determinants of adherence to sterling in its declining years as an international currency. Using an original cross-national panel dataset covering the period 1965-79, we conduct survival analysis which systematically evaluates a comprehensive set of economic and political factors, at the country level as well as in international relations, about when and why countries chose to diversify their reserves away from sterling. Our results highlight the significance of international transactional factors in influencing adherence to sterling, while the effects of British geopolitical retrenchment, Commonwealth cultural ties, and distributional issues were more ambiguous and sensitive to local conditions. We also find that domestic political and historical factors, such as democracy and imperial legacy, played a role in sterling's international unravelling. Finally, we use our results to examine the experience of individual sterling countries and their decisions to diversify
Currency · Economics · Economy · Geopolitics · International economics · Liberian dollar · Macroeconomics · Monetary economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Pound Sterling · Retrenchment · Finance · Global Financial Crisis and Policies · Law · Monetary Policy and Economic Impact · Public Administration · State Capitalism and Financial Governance
Currency Power
The Decline of Sterling
Currency and Coercion
A Positive Theory of Fiscal Deficits and Government Debt
The Commonwealth as an Economic Network
Sterling's Persistence as a Reserve Currency
Do old habits die hard? Central banks and the Bretton Woods gold puzzle
Global Monetary Order and the Liberal Order Debate
The Sterling Area and Economic Disintegration
Malaysia and the End of the Bretton Woods System 1965–72
The Stability of the Interwar Gold Exchange Standard
Sterling
Sterling and British Policy
Sterling in Decline
Sterling Balances and the Colonial Currency System
The British Economy in the Nineteen-Fifties
Money, Oil and Empire in the Middle East
Britain, South Africa and the sterling area
Zombie International Currency
Monetary Dependence in Africa
Britain and Commonwealth Africa
The Decline of British Economic Power Since 1870
The shift from sterling to the dollar, 1965-76
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |