Gianni Toniolo is Professor of Economics at the Università di Roma Tor Vergata (Italy) and Research Professor of Economics at Duke University. A former professor of Economics and chair of the Economics Department at the University of Venice, he has held visiting positions at All Souls College and St. Antony's College, Oxford, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, and the University of Connecticut. He is also a Research Fellow in the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London and a member of the European Academy. Professor Toniolo is the author of several books in Italian and English on European and Italian economic growth from 1800 to the present and the history of financial markets and institutions with special reference to central banking, including The European Economy between the Wars (1997, with C. H. Feinstein and P. Temin) and An Economic History of Liberal Italy, 1850-1918 (1990). He is the editor of 17 books, including Patterns of European Industrialization: the Nineteenth Century (1991, with R. E. Sylla), Central Banks' Independence in Historical Perspective (1988), and Economic Growth in Europe Since 1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1996, with N. Crafts). Professor Toniolo is co-editor (with P. Ciocca and G. Federico) of Rivista di Storia Economica.

List of figures and tables; Foreword; Preface; List of acronyms; 1. International payments and central bank cooperation; 2. Gestation and birth; 3. Organisation and first operations; 4. The 1931 crisis and international lending; 5. The end of reparations, the gold standard and the 1933 London conference; 6. An autarkic and divided world; 7. Wartime; 8. Bretton Woods; 9. Reconstructing multilateral payments; 10. Achieving convertibility; 11. The 1960s: patching up the Bretton Woods system; 12. Monetary union and financial stability; Epilogue; Notes; List of archives consulted; Bibliography; Annex A. BIS statutes 1930; Annex B. BIS balance sheet, 1930-2000; Annex C. BIS Board of Directors and Management, 1930-2005; Annex D. Chronology of events, 1929-2005; Annex E. Dramatis personae: biographical sketches; Index.