gold standard

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gold standard

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Category: Money

Key People:: Grover Cleveland; William McKinley; Rutherford B. Hayes; John Sherman; Justin S. Morrill

Related Topics:: two-tier gold system; gold-exchange standard; gold points; gold-import point; gold-export point

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gold standard, monetary system in which the standard unit of currency is a fixed quantity of gold or is kept at the value of a fixed quantity of gold. The currency is freely convertible at home or abroad into a fixed amount of gold per unit of currency. (Read Milton Friedman’s Britannica entry on money.) In an international gold-standard system, gold or a currency that is convertible into gold at a fixed price is used as a medium of international payments. Under such a system, exchange rates between countries are fixed; if exchange rates rise above or fall below the ...(100 of 723 words)

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