ABSTRACT
Moreover, these two papers stand in apparent significant contrast. De Cecco, as he has done before, regards the gold standard more as myth than practice. He sees increasing conflict, increasingly over the last two decades prior to World War I, between the rapidly evolving international financial markets and domestic objectives. In particular he emphasizes the potentially adverse consequences of short-term capital movements upon the economic fate of semi-peripheral countries. Not surprisingly, he draws extensively upon Italian and Austrian experience.
