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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2023
Especially with the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98, Asian countries have advocated a profound reform of the international financial architecture. Their proposals focused on two main axes: a reform of the global financial system, and stronger regional monetary integration in Asia. There are here significant parallels with the ideas of Robert Triffin (1911–1993). Triffin became famous with trenchant analyses of the vulnerabilities of the international monetary system. The Triffin dilemma is still present among international monetary policy-makers, also in Asia. Triffin put forward several proposals for reforming the global monetary system, but he also developed proposals for regional monetary integration. These were very much based on his experience with the European Payments Union, and focused on the creation of a (European) reserve fund and a (European) currency unit. In this paper we focus on Triffin’s proposals for an Asian payments union in the late 1960s, giving special attention to Japan (in Triffin’s time, the biggest Asian economy; moreover, Triffin had an important Japanese network).
The authors would like to thank the participants of the Bank of Japan workshop and the 2022 World Economic History Conference session, “Japan as Number Two,” as well as Jacques de Larosière, Barry Eichengreen, Dennis Essers, Mariko Hatase, Aiko Ikeo, Kazuhiko Yago, Shin Kubo, Niels Thygesen, Sylvie Rivot, Pierre-Hernan Rojas, Catherine Schenk, Dominique Torre, Raf Wouters, and three anonymous referees and Pedro Duarte for comments and suggestions. The usual restrictions apply.