01773cas a2200253 a 4500 AALejournalIMF019515 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9781498326773 1018-5941 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL Monnet, Eric. Do Old Habits Die Hard? : Central Banks and the Bretton Woods Gold Puzzle / Eric Monnet, Damien Puy. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2019. 1 online resource (32 pages) IMF Working Papers <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students Why did monetary authorities hold large gold reserves under Bretton Woods (1944-1971) when only the US had to? We argue that gold holdings were driven by institutional memory and persistent habits of central bankers. Countries continued to back currency in circulation with gold reserves, following rules of the pre-WWII gold standard. The longer an institution spent in the gold standard (and the older the policymakers), the stronger the correlation between gold reserves and currency. Since dollars and gold were not perfect substitutes, the Bretton Woods system never worked as expected. Even after radical institutional change, history still shapes the decisions of policymakers. Mode of access: Internet Puy, Damien. IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2019/161 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2019/161/001.2019.issue-161-en.xml IMF e-Library