L'Interdipendenza economica internazionale. Ascesa e declino di una categoria interpretativa tra keynesismo e monetarismo

This study tracks the process of international economic interdependence since the origins of the post WWII international economic order through to the dawn of the 1980s as the changing ratio of transnational capital flows to domestic aggregate demand. Through the two-fold perspective of U.S. foreign economic policy and the economic assistance programs promoted under the umbrella of the Bretton Woods international economic institutions (IBRD and IMF), and the shift from Keynesianism to monetarism typical of Post WWII economic theory, this contribution investigates the ways in which demand-management economic policies made way for strict monetary policies revolving around the idea that private capital markets could finance economic growth and aggregate demand. After reviewing the concept of interdependence in the economic literature from the end of WWII through the 1960s, we focus attention on the U.S. Federal Reserve, the IMF and the World Bank to suggest the persistence of demand management policies through the end of the 1970s. As orthodox monetary targets replaced demand side-oriented policies at the turn of the decade, this work points to a striking discrepancy between an early turn to monetarism in the economic thought and the late rise of neo liberal economic policies.