The best-known economists at Bretton Woods were British and American, but there were quite a few from other countries who made significant contributions in books or articles. The list below also notes some of the academic positions that the economists had at some point during their careers. Pierre Mendès-France, much better known as a politician (he later became prime minister of France), wrote some economic works early in his career.

League of Nations
Ragnar Nurkse: Estonian national; author, International Currency Experience: Lessons of the Inter-War Period (1944); Professor of Economics, Columbia University
Australia
Jim Brigden: P. P., on Purchasing Power and the Pound Australian (1931)
Belgium
Boris Serge “Ben” Chlepner: Professor, Free University of Brussels; Prélèvement sur le capital dans la théorie et la pratique (1925); Banque en Belgique (1926)
Brazil
Eugênio Gudin: Princípios de economia monetária (1947)
Canada
A.F.W. “Wynne” Plumptre: Central Banking in the British Dominions (1940); Three Decades of Decision: Canada and the World Monetary System, 1944-75 (1977)
China
Kia-Ngau Chang: The Inflationary Spiral: The Experience in China, 1939-1950 (1958)
Czechoslovakia
Ervin Paul Hexner: Professor of Economics and Political Science, University of North Carolina; International Cartels (1945)
France
Pierre Mendès-France: L’oeuvre financière du gouvernement Poincaré (1928); Banque internationale; contribution à l’étude du problème des États-Unis d’Europe (1930)
Robert Mossé: Professor, University of Grenoble; Assurance obligatoire contre le chômage au point de vue social (1929); L’économie collectiviste (1939)
Jean de Largentaye: translation of John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money into French (1942); La réforme du système monétaire internationale (1967)
Greece
Kyriakos Varvaressos: Report on the Greek Economic Problem (1952)
André (Andreas) Papandreou: Competition and Its Regulation (1954)
Netherlands
Johan Willem “Wim” Beyen: Money in a Maelstrom (1949)
Jacques Jacobus Polak: “Polak model” of the monetary approach to the balance of payments, used extensively by the IMF (1957)
New Zealand
Allan George Barnard Fisher: Economic Self-Sufficiency (1939); Clash of Progress and Security (1966); developed the idea of service industries as a distinct economic sector; first editor of the economics journal IMF Staff Papers
Norway
Wilhelm Keilhau: Professor of Economics, University of Oslo; Die Wertungslehre, Versuch einer exacten Beschreibung der oekonomischen Grundbeziehungen (1923); Norske pengehistorie (1952)
Poland
Michal (Michael) Heilperin: Associate Professor of Economics, Hamilton College; International Monetary Organisation (1939)
South Africa
Michiel H. de Kock: Central Banking (1939)
USSR
Aleksei Mikhailovich Smirnov: Professor, Institute of Foreign Trade; Normalization of World Trade and the Monetary Problem (1952)

The best-known delegate at the Bretton Woods conference, then and now, was John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th century. There were also many lesser-known but talented economists at Bretton Woods, who like Keynes contributed significantly to academic economics. I was surprised when I looked at the list of delegates how many had written books I had read or at least knew of. This post, drawn in part from Appendix A of The Bretton Woods Transcripts, lists only American and British economists and some of their most notable books. My next post will list economists from other countries, including several of foreign origin who were in exile in the United States during World War II. Besides those listed, there were others whose contributions were mainly to economic policy, or to national economic questions that did not have an international audience. I am aware of no other international conference with such a collection of important economists.

United Kingdom
John Maynard Keynes: one of the few economists ever to have a durable school of thought named after him; major works include The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919); A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923); A Treatise on Money (1930); The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)
Dennis H. Robertson: Cambridge University; the best writer economics has ever produced; major works include Money (1922); Banking Policy and the Price Level (1926; his most important yet worst-written book); Essays in Monetary Theory (1940)
Lionel Robbins: professor, London School of Economics, and a leader in its rise to international eminence; Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932); The Great Depression (1934; a work he later disavowed); A History of Economic Thought (1998, posthumous)
Sir Theodor E. Gregory: professor, London School of Economics;  advisor to India at Bretton Woods; Tariffs: A Study in Method (1921); Foreign Exchange: Before, During and After the War (1930); The Gold Standard and Its Future (1931)
Redvers Opie: Oxford University; translator of Joseph Schumpeter’s Theory of Economic Development (1934)

United States—delegation and members of the conference secretariat
James W. Angell: professor, Columbia University; Theory of International Prices (1926); Behavior of Money (1936)
Emanuel A. Goldenweiser: top Federal Reserve economist; Federal Reserve System in Operation (1925); American Monetary Policy (1951)
Alvin Hansen: professor, Harvard University; introduced the economics of John Maynard Keynes in the United States; Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy (1949); A Guide to Keynes (1953)
George Luthringer: Gold-Exchange Standards in the Philippines (1934); Money, Credit and Finance (1937)
William Adams Brown, Jr.: England and the New Gold Standard, 1919-1926 (1929); The International Gold Standard Reinterpreted, 1914-1934 (1940)
Raymond Mikesell: professor, University of Oregon; Foreign Exchange in the Postwar World (1954); several works on natural resources
John Parke Young: Central American Currency and Finance (1925)
Arthur N. Young: brother of John Parke Young; advisor to China at Bretton Woods; The Single Tax Movement in the United States (1916); China’s Wartime Finance and Inflation, 1937-1945 (1965)
Mordecai Ezekiel: described the “pork cycle,” a textbook staple for decades; Methods of Correlation Analysis (1930)

The Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung reviewed The Bretton Woods Transcripts earlier this week. The FAZ, as it is nicknamed, is one of Germany’s leading newspapers, widely regarded as having the best coverage of economics and business.

The review, behind a pay wall, is titled “Geburt des Dollar-Privilegs,” or “Birth of the Dollar’s Privilege.” The title is refers to the special role of the U.S. dollar in the Bretton Woods system of pegged exchange rates. The system began in 1946, largely broke down in 1971, and definitively ended in 1973. It was in practice based on the U.S. dollar, rather than being based on gold like the international monetary system before World War II and especially before World War I. In the 1960s, France’s finance minister termed the dollar’s special role an “exorbitant privilege.” A similar criticism was current in Germany, whose officials correctly perceived that the Bretton Woods exchange rate system gave the United States latitude in the short term for loose monetary policy that would result in higher inflation throughout the system than Germans wanted. (Germany did not participate in the Bretton Woods conference. It joined the IMF and World Bank in 1952, after being defeated in World War II and experiencing a period of occupation and rehabilitation.) The review stresses that the roots of the special role the dollar would have were already visible at the Bretton Woods conference.

The review also mentions the strategies of the Soviet Union at the conference, the role of John Maynard Keynes, and the availability of supplementary documents on the CFS Web site.

A Washington correspondent of the FAZ, Patrick Welter, wrote the review.

Edward Bernstein, a leading U.S. delegate to the Bretton Woods conference (whom I will discuss in a later post), described his fellow delegates as “technicians moving up the hierarchy,” or as we would call them today, technocrats. Delegates included no fewer than seven future presidents or prime ministers, as well as many more future finance ministers, central bank governors, and top officials of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. An appendix in The Bretton Woods Transcripts contains a full list of delegates and capsule biographies for them.  Here is the list of the delegates who would later rise to the top in their national political systems:

• Canada: Louis S. Saint Laurent, prime minister 1948-1957
• Colombia: Carlos Lleras Restrepo, president 1966-1970
• France: Pierre Mendès-France, prime minister 1954-1955
• Greece: Andreas Papandreou, prime minister 1981-1989, 1993-1996
• Iceland: Ásgeir Ásgeirsson, president 1952-1968
• New Zealand: Walter Nash, prime minister 1957-1960
• Peru: Pedro G. Beltrán, prime minister 1959-1961

As I mentioned in a previous post, Harry Dexter White, while not formally a Soviet spy, illegally passed classified information to the Soviets and used his position to protect persons suspected of espionage for the Soviets. White died in 1948. The case against him, though strong, continued to seem largely circumstantial until the release of the Venona files — Soviet code messages decrypted by the U.S. government that, among other things, provided evidence of White’s activities. As was standard practice, Soviet code messages did not use  White’s name, but the messages concerned can hardly apply to anybody else. Well before the release of the Venona files, though, there were those who saw in White’s other behavior the pattern that the Venona files confirmed.

In the U.S. Treasury Library’s copy of the book Harry Dexter White — Loyal American, written by White’s brother Nathan I. White and published by his sister Bessie (White) Bloom (Boston, 1956), taped to the inside back cover is a note signed by Francis J. Gafford, a Treasury personnel security officer, dated May 13, 1958. It says, “Ernest R. Feidler, Administrator of the National Gallery of Art, formerly Assistant to the Under Secretary of the Treasury, has read Harry D. White — Loyal American by Nathan I. White, and commented to the effect that the inaccuracies in the book are extensive and his conviction that Harry D. White gave assistance knowingly to the Communist Party has not changed since reading the book.”

Also in the Treasury Library’s copy is what looks like a carbon copy of a cover note and two-page letter dated October 17, 1956 from “M.L. [Malachi Lawrence] Harney, Consultant” to Francis J. Gafford, The letter characterizes the book as a “Whitewashing,” and says that, contrary to White’s denial that he knew Whittaker Chambers, “Chambers certainly characterized White as only a man who knew him would.” The letter also says, “Unnoted and undoubtedly unknown to the author are such disservices as his [Harry Dexter White’s] overriding the plain warning of the Treasury investigative agencies against [Nathan Gregory] Silvermaster, and his clearing him for attendance at the Bretton Woods conference.” Harney was a former Assistant Chief Coordinator of Treasury Enforcement Agencies and Assistant to the Commissioner of Narcotics. Francis J. Gafford was an assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury.  Silvermaster was the leader of a spy ring that passed secrets to the Soviet Union.

More about Harry Dexter White, the Soviet Union, and Bretton Woods is available in the dissertation that Prof. Peter Acsay has kindly allowed the CFS to post, and in the most recent biography of White, Treasonable Doubt by R. Bruce Craig (2004).

(I have added a new first paragraph on November 10, to provide more background.)

A fascinating sidelight of the time of the Bretton Woods conference is that the Soviet Union had not only its own delegation to give it information about American positions on various issues related to international finance; it also had several Americans.

Harry Dexter White, Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury and the chief American negotiator at Bretton Woods, was not formally a spy in the sense of being on the Soviet payroll, taking orders originating from Soviet intelligence agents, or regularly reporting to a spy runner. He did, however, illegally pass classified information to the Soviets, and he used his position to protect persons suspected of espionage and later revealed to have been spies. He may have made his first direct contact with a Soviet spy runner at Bretton Woods. My next post will have more to say about White’s activities, drawn from a minor source I came across in my research that to my knowledge has not so far been used.

N. Gregory Silvermaster, an assistant in the U.S. delegation to Bretton Woods, had been born in Russia. At the time of the conference he was working at the Treasury Department.  He was the head of a spy ring that reached into the White House, War Department, Department of Justice, and Department of Agriculture.

Two other spies were members of the conference secretariat rather than the American delegation. V. Frank Coe was the Technical Secretary General, the second-highest official in the secretariat. His regular job was as an assistant administrator in the U.S. Foreign Economic Administration, which gave foreign aid.

William Ludwig “Lud” Ullmann had been Harry Dexter White’s assistant before being drafted into the U.S. Army, where he became a captain.

White is the only one of these who appears in the Bretton Woods transcripts.

The Soviet Union’s well-placed spies at Bretton Woods ultimately yielded it no advantage connected with the conference. Although the Soviet  Union signed the IMF and World Bank agreements, indicating its potential willingness to join, it later decided not to join. White and Coe later became high-level officials of the IMF in its early days.

(For more information, see two books by John Earl Haynes and coauthors: Venona [1999] and Spies [2009].)

The transcripts of the Bretton Woods conference were never meant to be published, but we have them.

Today the CFS releases The Bretton Woods Transcripts, an e-book edited by me and Andrew Rosenberg. It contains verbatim proceedings of many meetings from the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, which established the IMF and World Bank and began an era of international economic cooperation that endures today. The Web page for the book contains much more information about it, plus extensive background material that is being made readily available for the first time. Over the next few weeks I will comment here on elements of the book, and offer some details about the conference and its participants that are not in the book.