The US Dollar’s Exorbitant Privilege And The International History Of Reserve Currencies with Barry Eichengreen

Jon Hartley and Barry Eichengreen discuss his background and research, the status of the US dollar as a world reserve currency, the yuan’s inability to gain traction despite China’s growth, the euro, transitions between world reserve currencies, the rise of public debt, and the history of fixed versus floating exchange rate regimes.

Recorded on August 18, 2026.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Barry Eichengreen is George C. Pardee & Helen N. Pardee Chair and Distinguished Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London, England). In 1997-98 he was senior policy advisor at the International Monetary Fund. His books include Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto (2026), The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era (2018), How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present, and Future, with Livia Chitu and Arnaud Mehl, (2017), The Korean Economy: From a Miraculous Past to a Sustainable Future (Harvard East Asian Monographs) with Wonhyuk Lim, Yung Chul Park and Dwight H. Perkins, (2015), Renminbi Internationalization: Achievements, Prospects, and Challenges, co-edited with Masahiro Kawai, (2015), Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History, (2015). He was awarded the Economic History Association's Jonathan R.T. Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2002 and the University of California at Berkeley Social Science Division's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004.