Systèmes monétaires et systèmes de change du XVIe et d'aujourd'hui en Europe occidentale

The fascinating story of the monetary experience of Occidental Europe that M.-T. Boyer-Xambeu, G. Deleplace and L. Gillard recount in their work, Private Money and the Power of the Princes, inspires numerous questions about the relationship between this experience and today's in the same geographical area. Is not the role of Lyons in 1533-1575 now fulfilled by the European Monetary System and the City of London? Have not the merchant-bankers of the sixteenth century simply been replaced by today's large international banks? Aren't the profits that the latter derive from the multiplicity of national monies still coming from the same source? Don't the differences stem fundamentally from the reductions of the costs of transport and communications owing to the airplane, telecommunications, and the computer? These multiple questions are the subject of this article, in which we try to cast light on the evolution of the relationship between the powers, the bankers, and the people in the determination of exchange rates since the sixteenth century

Art · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Humanities · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History