Managing the Franc Poincaré

Managing the Franc Poincaré is a study of French monetary policy during the Depression. It seeks to explain bankers', politicians' and civil servants' stubborn pursuit of a deflationary way out of the crisis, despite evidence of its failures abroad.

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Defence of the franc Poincaré dominated French economic policy during the Depression. While most countries took their currencies off gold to permit a wider range of domestic policies to foster recovery, in France policy makers resolved to preserve the gold parity of the franc by balancing the budget and lowering domestic prices. Novelty and experimentation were rejected in the conviction that a durable recovery was possible only through a return to strict neoclassical orthodoxy. Managing the Franc Poincaré examines French monetary management from 1928 to 1936 in order to explain this stubborn determination to achieve recovery through deflation despite evidence of its failures abroad.