Money Doctoring after World War II: Arthur I. Bloomfield and the Federal Reserve Missions to South Korea

Abstract

This article explores the foreign economic policy activities of Arthur I. Bloomfield as a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In the cold war years Bloomfield headed several official missions to South East Asia, which assisted foreign authorities in the shaping of new foreign exchange regimes and banking institutions. Bloomfield’s most successful mission concerned the constitution of a new central bank in South Korea, which was established in June 1950, less than two weeks before the North Korean invasion. Bloomfield was directly responsible for drafting the central bank’s statute and the new banking act that would regulate South Korea’s monetary policy and banking system for the following decades. His accomplishments remain an important chapter in the history of postwar monetary reforms in developing countries together with the role played by U.S. economists in their advisory activities.