Writing on the Bank of Italy and the BIS: approaches and challenges

Gianni Toniolo(Duke, LUISS & CEPR)

Norges Bank Workshop

Writing Central Bank and Monetary History – what are the issues?

Geneva, 30-31 October 2008

Content

1. Random thoughts on the challenges in writing the history of a central bank

2. The Banca d’Italia Centenary (1993)3. The BIS experience (2005)

Monetary history ≠ Central Bank history

• Money is larger than central banking

• There is more than money supply to central bank experience

• Monetary theory more developed than theory of central banking

Central banking is an art..

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879-1975)

A good central bank history..

…is like the giraffe, difficult to describe but easy to recognize when you see one.

Challenges• Definition of central bank• CB as a complex (idiosyncratic) institution• Path dependence• Interrelation with Gvt, Mkt, Foreign sector• Theory• Prestige & popularity

Challenges: peoplePeople (character, brain, education, social milieu) matter much more than many economists (and some historians) are ready to admit

Challenges: writing styleNot the sexiest subject..Pick a target reader and write for her not for your academic colleaguesThere are some tricks (see below on BIS) but writing is always a pesonal matter.

The 1993 Centenary of the Banca d’Italia

1983 Governor Ciampiannounced a 10-year plan to celebrate the Bank’s Centenary

Plan included:Invest in ArchiveHistorical officeResearch: materials for the BI’s history

BI: research output• 14 volumes of annotated documents with

lengthy introductions (12 published before 1993)

• 6 volumes of statistics (3 published before 1993)

• 10 volumes of collected ad hoc studies (4 published before 1993).

• 4 monographs (all published after 1993)

BI: research output• New statistics

– Monetary– GDP

• About 80 papers and monographs by almost as many authors both from the Bank’s staff and from academia.

• Introductions to volumes of documents went part way in producing a history of the Bank (they were later collected in a single volume)

BI: the centenary's lasting impact

• Considerable addition to knowledge of Italian economic history

• Major collaboration academia / Bank staff• Historical Research Division made

permanent• Archive splendidly organized (2008 EABH

prize winner) & open to public

The BI’s experience: downsides

• Lack of intellectual coordination and final synthesis. Encyclopedic effort based on the illusion that by providing documents, statistics and background studies scholars would jump on the material and produce their own syntheses.

• No history of the Bank emerged from this huge intellectual effort

• Publications in Italian only.

The BIS experience• 75th anniversary

(1930-2005)• History commissioned

in 1998• Press attacks and

lawsuits claiming war crimes among the motivations

BIS: the commission• Previous commission (Baffi) 1980s. One

chapter produced (& shelved)• Search committee (about 80 scholars

examined)• 5 shortlisted & inetrviewed• Total freedom of research• Assistant

BIS: the challenges• Definition of the object• Theory• Politics• The dark sides (wartime)• Social life and personalities• National cultures, languages, archives• Literary style

BIS: output• Book: 612 pages +

117 pp appendices & index

• Archive upgraded and (selectively) opened

• Conference (2005)• Exhibition in Basel on

the history of the BIS (2005)